40 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 



has an established reputation for effectiveness. Again, in the statue 

 of the Strigil-bearer, the left hand is shown in action. 



Finally, Dr. Erlenmeyer, whilst noting that most of the Aryans 

 write from left to right, and that most of the Semitic peoples write 

 from right to left, maintains that the writers of the Old Testament, 

 and probably the early Talmudists, so wrote because they used 

 their left hands. To write with the other was a difficulty ; and he 

 points out that it is on this account that the Talmud orders that cer- 

 tain special prayers are to be written with the right hand. This 

 argument is certainly as valid as the converse contention which, 

 remarking the existence of a specific term for left-handedness in a 

 language, would infer the right-handedness of the race which used 

 that speech. Dr. Erlenmeyer quotes passages from the text of the Old 

 Testament emphasising, as he considers, the left-handedness of the 

 Hebrew race. The argument for the existence of a left-handed people 

 is, moreover, confirmed by the record of actual observation, inasmuch 

 as in the account of Yasco di Gama's voyage to Calicut it is stated that 

 the inhabitants of Melinda — "a polished and flourishing people" — 

 were all left-handed. ^° Erom what precedes, we may, I think, legiti- 

 mately conclude that it is, at least, highly improbable that the pre- 

 ferential use of the right hand, now prevalent, depends upon the 

 imperative dictates of the anatomical structure of the human organism. 

 Under that theory, left-handedness would be a "monstrosity," and 

 come within the domain of teratology, which seems to have been the 

 view of Dr. Ogle, who stated that it resembled many physical malfor- 

 mations in being hereditary, and attaching rather to the male than to 

 the female sex.^^ This remark can scarcely be entitled an argument, 

 for heredity is no special appanage of malformations, and whatever 

 latent transmitted tendency may exist will be more developed in the 

 members of that sex to which it is more taught, or which more 

 requires it. Hence, if not bound by an absolute rule of structure, 

 we are free to regard left-handedness, when it does occur, as a rever- 

 sion to an earlier normal type, if it should so please us ; or to derive 

 it, with right-handedness, from a common ambidextrous ancestry, as I 

 maintain. 



jamite, a Deliverer, is noted as left-handed. He girded Hs dagger on his right 

 thigh. As his peculiarity put Eglon, King of Moab, off his guard, it may be in- 

 ferred that the Moabites were right-handed, in this particular. Professor W. M. 

 Hennessy finds, in the ancient Irish tract of the Battle of Ross-na-Righ, a cham- 

 pion represented as doing fearful havoc on foes by a "left-handed mill- grind" 

 with his sword. In the Indian collection, Belgaum, South Kensington Museum, 

 are shown two women grinding at a mill — a quern ; the woman who turns th,e 

 upper stone, by means of a short upright staff, grasps this staff in her left hand. 



^0 Home Tooke: Diversions of Furley, 1805, vol. ii. 10. The existence of left- 

 handed tribes in India is recorded. [For a summary of Dr. Erlenmeyer's observa- 

 tions, see British Medical Journal, June, 1883.] 



11 Proceedings of Eoyal Medical and Chirurgical Society, London — Lancet, 

 July 8, 1871. 



