AN ANCIENT READING OF FINGER-PRINTS.

Northland Age, Volume 2, Issue 41, 22 May 1906, Page 8

AN ANCIENT READING OF FINGER-PRINTS.

j fn the “North American Review’’ TV. Louis Robinson has an interestj; ing paper on Finger-Prints—"the curious scrdll-like patterns made by covering the front surface of the fingers with printer’s ink, and then prosing them on paper." " In dist cussing th« true nutural history o( the minute ridges upon the fingers," says Pr. Robinson. “Gal ton goes no further than did the first physiologist bt note who drew attention to iah Grow, an almost forgotten worthy who gave an account of his observations in a paper read before the Royal Society in the year 1084. Oddly enough. Gallon, whose paper - on “Patterns in Thumb and Finger Marks'* came before the same august body just 207 years later, appears ’ never to have heard of the observations of Nehemiah Grew, which are Proceedings. At any rate, in trac- ' ing the history of finger-study. Galton goes bock no further than Purmu' with the minute putterns on the “Nehemiah Grew, who was the son of Otadiah Grew. a n enuncnt-Puritan divine, was elected Secfetary of the Royal Society in 1071. and probably f held that coveted position at the time when the essay above alluded to was read He was by no means the j, least notable of that band of eager students of science, who mode the reign of King Charles 11. almost as much a time of scientific awakening as the Cali a n Renaissance was a time of artistic awakening. Probably, the discoveries of the illustrious William Harvey, who first revealed the truth as to the circulation of the blood, has a great deal to do with arousing this new interest in the wonders •■-of nature Nehemiah Grew was born in 1641, a few months before Isaac Newton, anti among his contemporaries were Harvey, ; Leuwenhoek, the . pioneer with the microscope : Edward Tyson, who first dissected a ■ chimpanzee, and published his reb suits under the title, ‘The Anatomic* f of a Pygiiiie’ ; Sir Ilans Sloane ; ' Leibnitz ; Halley the astronomer ; Dr. Sydenham, one of the greatest reformers in Medicine ; and Sir T. Browne, the gentle philosopher of Norwich, whose words quoted from Search where thou wilt, and let thy Wisdom go, To ransom Truth, e’en to the Abyss ; below. Rally the scattered causes, and the line Which Nature twists be able to untwine, give admirable proof that the true scientific spirit animated the men ot this seventeenth-century renaissance. "Nehemiah Grew, in his paper ‘On the Pores in the Skin of the Hands and Feet.' says .—‘lf any one will but take the pains, with an indifferent glass, to survey the palms of tho hands, very well washed with a ball, he may perceive innumerable little ridges, .of equal size and distance, and everywhere running parallel to each other. And especially on the and thumb, on the top of the ball, and near the root of the thumb a little above the wrist. In all which places, they are very regularly disposed into spherical triangles and ellipses On these ridges stand the pores, all in even rows, and of such a magnitude as to be visible to a good eye without a glass. But, being viewed with one, every pore looks like a little fountain, and the sweat may be seen to stand therein as clear as rock-water, and as often as it is wiped off, to spring up within them again. What Nature intends in the position of these ridges is, that they may the better suit with the use and motion of the hand. . On the ridges, the pores are very providently placed, and not in the furrows which lie between them : that so their structure might be the stronger and less liable to be depraved by r compression. . . . For the I same reason the pores are also very large, that they may still lie the betI ter preserved, though the skin be •ever so much compressed and condensed by the constant use and labour of the hand.’ ” As Dr. Robinson says, “this quaint and graphic description (which, b> t the way, gives us a rather startling inflight ns to the average state of cleanliness among savants' during l teat gouty age, seeing that the der tail: o/ the skin were presumed to |. remain invisible until the hands had been very well washed with a ball’) y may enable us to read new meanings in finger-prints when subjected to a j* <Uo*fl flfjrutirtv. Ulit-n magnify*! three

or tour dTfcmetcrs, the lines are found to bear a curious resemblance to blurred lines of print. This is owing to the fact that the cuplike pores, to which Dr. Neheruiah Grew draws attention, almost break the. continuity of the lines, giving them somewhat the appearance of a series lof letters and words which have I partly run together. It will be seen that he accounts for the existence of the minute ridges by reference to- the protection which these gave to the openings of the sweatglands. Gal ton seems to have arrived at almost the same conclusion ! for he says : ‘The uses of the ridges I are primarily, as I suppose, to raise the mouths of the ducts, so that the I excretions which they pour out may ; the more easily be got rid of ; and, I also, in some obscure way, to assist the sense of touch.’ "