Useless Hands.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 17, 26 April 1911, Page 62

Useless Hands.

Sir Frederick Treves, the eminent surgical authority in “Nineteenth Century,” declares very emphatically that “it would seem that the highest point of development in the use of the hands has been already reached; has been, indeed, passed, and that we have now entered upon a decline.” Let us see to what extent Sir Frederick’s contentions are supported.

Two of the commonest handicrafts are those of writing and sewing, but they are being now rapidly supplanted by the typewriter on the one hand and the sewing machine on the other. The finer use of the fingers is thus becoming lost, so far as these simple crafts are concerned. There was occasion when penmanship was almost a fine art, and the writing master a power in the land. In these present days of hurry there is no time for elegant handwriting. The script of the ordinary letter-writer is often <is hard to interpret as the message on the Rosetta stone, and as there is, coincidentally, no leisure available for the deciphering of illegible writing. the typing machine becomes opportune.

Surgery during recent years has made amazing advances. Should it be asked if this progress has been associated With, or dependent upon, a corresponding development of the handicraft of surgery, the answer is, it has not. Before the days of anaesthetics the surgeon was operating upon a conscious being. Rapidity of movehient was all essential cess was gauged by the stop-watch', every unnecessary second meant unnecessary torture. The surgeon had to be marvellously deft of hand, cool, yet alert ns a fencer, quick, yet as sure as a matador. The combination of qualities that made

up a good operating surgeon was rare, and so in those days the perfect operator was equally rare. Now with the use of anaesthetics, the surgeon can proceed with easy deliberation, every step can be measured and judged; there is no call to be brilliant; there is no element of hurry, fox’ in place of the flashing of a blade is an action as studied as a movement of ths chessboard. The result of it is this. Surgery as a pure handicraft has undoubtedly lost ground. Some of the simplex' erafts exhibit in striking fashion the decay of cultivation in the use of the hands.

Lace-making is probably the most elaborate work which has ever engaged the facile fingers of women. Lace making has engaged whole colonies of women, and has enabled them to bring the culture of the hand to a marvellous degree of perfection. This has assuredly been an object worthy of attainment. But the days of the exaft are nearly over, ami the manual skill so laboriously attained is in spite of all attempts to revive it—in process of being lost. Embroidery and weaving are in much the same position.

The carpenter, with his primitive art, is still with us, but he is not the handicraftsman that he was.. There are sawing engines and planing machines for boards of every kind. The “four-cutter machine” works all four faces of the wood simultaneously. Machines have been produced for fashioning all kinds of mouldings, for cutting dovetails, mortises and tenons, while the engine known as the "universal joiner” is a combin-

ation machine with superhuman powers. The “copying lathe” produces objects of regular or irregular shapes automatically from a pattern, and can turn out with equal ease a gunstock ox- a broomhandle, a boot-last ox- a toy horse. The sand papering machine is almost uncanny in its imitation of human movements, while the self-directing lathe represents the callous absorption of whole centuries of manual skill.

Six' Frederick Treves goes through a long list of occupations, arts and accomplishments which formerly called into play great dexterity of the hand and fingers, and which are now done by machinery. Even piano playing is included in the list. The loss is both great and regrettable. Great, urges our authority, because, in spite of our pride of race, we are compelled to own that the human being is—in one particular, at least—showing signs, not of advancement, but of decay. Regrettable because there must be few who would not endorse the teaching of Ruskin when he said that “every youth, from the King’s son downward, should learn to do something finely and thoroughly with his hand.”