HANDWRITING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19904, 25 September 1926, Page 12

HANDWRITING.

Db Benham’s playful suggestion that a Chair of Handwriting might be established at the University of Otago may not appeal to munificent philanthropists desirous of endowing the University with a portion of their accumulated wealth ; but it was a fitting finale to an entertaining discussion. Mr John Fuller, of Sydney, has made an appreciable contribution to the gaiety of a dull season. The medical profession, we are inclined to think, is carrying more than its fair share of responsibility as regards bad or dubious handwriting. Doctors, outside their prescriptive mysteries, have been known to be decently legible scribes, and, as a class, they have no exceptional notoriety for the indifference of their caligraphy. It may bo true that there is a secret Understanding, a hieroglyphic code of freemasonry, between the writers and the dispensers of prescriptions. Perhaps this is not a regrettable circumstance. “I understand that the comparative illegibility is intended as a safeguard against rash action by the general public,” pertinently remarked the viee-clianecllor at the meeting of | flic University Council this week. Jt;

is not, for the inexpert layman to peer too searebingly into the arena of technical terminology. With rare exceptions the practitioner and the chemist may bo implicitly trusted. Exceptions

there sib, m doubt, few sad tar between. The chemist who reads 80 minims instead of half a minim is apt to produce tragic results. A fifth of a grain of morphia is a safe and useful dose in some ailments, but make it five grains, and an inquest will, or should, follow! Dr Marshall Macdonald told a lively story about the resource* fulness of the mind of a chemist who had been consulted to decipher a weirdly cryptic legend. But, as we said before, doctors have been overblamed. They are not the only culprits. The signature of «ome business men of standing, subscribed to (fortunately) type-written letters, is the last word in illegibility. It may be buspected that there are people who take a pride in their mystio obscurity of script. There are lawyers, clergymen, politicians, even journalists, who wonld be none the worse for being compelled, in accordance with Mr Fuller’s idea, to pass an examination in handwriting.