LEFT-HANDED PEOPLE

Evening Star, Issue 22638, 3 May 1937, Page 16

LEFT-HANDED PEOPLE

**KIHG GEORGE AMONG NUMBER DANGERS IN CORRECTION Because of a superstition that anything seen or done on the left foreboded ill, was, therefore, to be shunned as unlucky, the left hand has been in disrepute for centuries. A deep-rooted prejudice, use ot this hand is confined by South African natives, for example, to all degrading acts. The Maoris consider it profane, and use it as little as possible. Romans had a word for it in the evil-sounding “ sinister.” , ~ Conscious of an ‘ ugly duckling _ embarrassment in consequent of this perverse heritage, from 4 to 8 per cent, of the world’s population have, willy-nilly, served out their appointed days, often with no small share to their right-handed betters. Far from being maladroit, balmy, or queer, some have been great personages. Many of Egypt’s Pharaohs were letthanded. So were most of Rome s Ctesars; the Biblical Benjamin, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci was so completely left-handed he wrote a backward stroke readable only with a mirror. , In boxing parlance a fighter who boxes the reverse way is known as ■ a “ southpaw,” and the phrase is now often applied to a left-hander. Recently, journalists discovered that the small and select clan of contemporary “southpaws” bad at their head no less a figure than King [George VI. of England. Moreover, like the elite of left-handers, he is considerably ambidexterous. , , Early taking to his right hand, King George uses his left virtually in tennis alone. He is an expert rifle shot, good at squash, a nimble boxer, and _ has awed caddies on the links with righthand drives of 210yds. While he _ still stammers, Royal circles deny this is due to efforts to correct his left-hand-edness in infancy.' ■ . . Why King George, like simstral kinsmen the world over, is that way has long been a matter of divided opinion -among medical scientists. Some hold that handedness, left or right, is an acquired trait, others that it is of congenital origin. The first school traces it to the way a child is held in infancy, to its[ social training; or possibly to its imitative instincts; the second seeks to. connect it with the structural features of the human body. The latter has several explanations, an unequal distribution in. the two halves of the body which displaces the centre of gravity, an unequal supply of blood to the two sides of the brain, functional predominance of one side of the brain, and the potency of the right eye. For instance, about 50 per cent, of left-handed people are also “left eyed”; about 70 per cent, of right-handed are “ right-eyed.” To many a psychologist and behaviorist, the most plausible of these postulates is the one that holds people are left-handed because they are rightbrained. This is supported by the theory that the left hemisphere of the brain predominates in right (or dextral) handers and the right in left (or sinistral) handers. What happens here is the motor nerves that innervate the two halves of a body as they descend from the cerebral hemisphere cross over from one side to the other.

All skulls are structurally lopsided, contrary to the old-time phrenologists’ claim of the perfect head. Persons with the right side of the skull more developed are generally more developed throughout tho right _ side of their bodies, including ears, limbs, and feet. Yet they are left-handed. The opposite is true of persons with the left side developed. This fact alone, congenital theorists point put, suggests evidence of sex influence in handedness determination. From families in which one or both of the parents are left-handed, the percentage of left-handed children is 17.34 per cent.; in families in which neither of the parents is left-handed, only 2.1 per cent, of the children are left-handed. Two Jeft-handed parents nearly always have a left-handed child.

if left-handedness were not inherited not more than 5 per cent, of lefthanded children would be found in any of these families, regardless of the handedness of parents, according to Herbert D. Chamberlain, Ohio State University psychologist. Most psychologists agree that children should not be broken of lefthandedness. They hold that a child forced to disturb the natural use of the hand he wishes to use will be nervous and uncomfortable. The higher percentage of left-handers in asylums for the insane is attributed to just this cause. In at least 11 per cent, of the cases, tests show, the children so tampered with will stammer or stutter. The reason is that the change disturbs the nerve-centres used in reading, writing, and speech. Scholarly, white-haired Dr Samuel Torrey Orton ( • famed New York psychopathologist, finds, on the other hand, that about 40 out of every 100 children are naturally left-handed. Ten of these, he says, cling to their natural disposition, 30 shift handedness. ■ r ~ his study of 500 odd cases, Dr Orton found scores of parents who had changed children’s nandedness from left to right. He found only three who had tried the reverse. One mother sat opposite her child at the dinner table attempting futilely to train her child along “ unnatural ” lines' by confusing his left and right hands.. Two fathers tried vainly to convert their sons into ■“ southpaws,” hoping they would some day make better baseball pitchers. Some of the world’s finest athletes have been left-handed, and both batting and bowling left-handed is common in cricket. in tennis Narman Brooks and Kay Stammers are famous “ southpaws,” and many golfers have to get clubs made facing the “ wrong ” way, as playing left-handed comes natural to them, and the best instructor for a' goliing novice to get hold of is a left-handed pro., as he faces the beginner in explaining grips, stance, swing, wrists, etc., and it is an easy matter to copy him as you face him. The biagest bugbear among 11 southpaws ” is the left-handed batsman at cricket, as most of the field has to be changed when he takes strike, and often the sight-screen needs special shifting for him.