FINGER-NAIL SECRETS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20104, 24 March 1928, Page 14 (Supplement)

FINGER-NAIL SECRETS

A GUIDE TO HEALTH. “Show me. your nails,” a scientist once declared, “and I will tell you what you are.” Bold but not impossible, so much do the nails reveal, secrets of health. From the way their edges arc worn down or from tell-tale dyes that stain their tips, a Sherlock Holmes can predict their owner’s occupation, while even to ordinary people variations between perfection of manicure and studied carelessness present character problems not usually difficult to solve (says the Capo Argus). Uneven growth, resultng in unsightly ridges running from side to side, signifies recent ill-health, while “reedy” nails, tending to crack from end to end, denot an abnormal dryness not infrequently associated with gout. Healthy nails arc transparent, and in the delicate network of vessels lying beneath them the colour of the blood and other details of the circulation can be observed. If by gentle pressure over the nail, the blood is driven out of these vessels, it will, in healthy people, return smoothly and without visible pulsation when the pressure is removed. But should the valves guarding the entrance from the heart to the main artery of the body be diseased—so delicate is the response between the heart and its blood vessels—the inefficiency of the leaking valves will be reflected right to the finger tips where it can be recognised beneath the nails by an alternating pulsation of pink and pallor lasting after the pressure is removed until equilibrium of the circulation is again restored.