_

Excited by their summary and the wealth of standard palmistry that caught my eye, I eagerly sat down to read through their work. I was hoping they would make use of some of the palmistry I know, but in a medical context. This is what I found:

Johnson and Opitz look at Lieber's (1960)6 work and correct some of his most glaring difficulties, providing fairly accurate palmistic interpretations of Lieber's C1, C2, and C3 types. For instance, they describe the palmistic interpretation of the C1 type as a hand of resistance or vitalism, a much more accurate interpretation of the double Life Line than Lieber's "unequivocally pathological"7 designation. Although the lines Johnson and Opitz refer to as lines of personal effort actually go from the Life Line up to the finger of Saturn (not across the palm), having read Milton Alter, this seemed liked a minor error.

Johnson and Opitz also give a reasonable, though simplified, view of the Sydney Line (see figure 2), a line that has been medically associated with childhood leukemia.

Although Johnson and Opitz do not attempt to put hand readers' interpretations of the major lines in context with hand shape, thumb, etc., they do discuss hand reader's views on the Life Line (e.g., islands = physical or nervous stress), Head Line (e.g., straight = logical, aloof; gaps = lapse of judgment), and the Heart Line (e.g., too long = a person at the mercy of their emotions). As opposed to most of the articles I read in the medical libraries, these authors appear to have taken the time to become at least somewhat familiar with basic palmistry.

However, as I soon discovered, Johnson and Opitz's purpose is not to laud palmistry nor to make use of its data base in pediatric exams. They merely consider it ironic that it coincides in any way with their own work. Johnson and Opitz show an entire page from Fortune in your Hand, by Elizabeth Squire, (page 102)8 and then go on to say, "Medical investigators have found the single palmar crease to be associated with a variety of syndromes and congenital abnormalities. Here, in an illustration taken from a book on cheiromancy, the heart and head lines when joined indicate an unusual person. In this one instance, the cheiromancer and the medical examiner are in complete agreement, for a child with a single palmar crease may indeed be unusual."

"The single palmar crease as viewed by a cheiromancer"

Johnson and Opitz then give their data: a study of 276 children with a variety of disorders, and 150 well children. They found a higher incidence of congenital abnormalities (52% to 30%), borderline retardation or lower IQ (52% to 33%), and certain types of problem pregnancies (infection and bleeding) in the single palmar crease (also known as the Simian Line) cases. They also found a lower incidence of prematurity and delivery complications. They conclude that the Simian Crease suggests some insult to the fetus in the first trimester and that normal looking infants with the Simian Crease should be watched carefully for later difficulties. I would have liked to have seen figures on the above average IQ's associated with single palmar crease hands included in the study. I think it is important to add that in my experience of hundreds of hands with the Simian Line, in almost all cases, these clients were at least of normal intelligence, and some were exceptional.

While not disputing the data on retardation, nor their conclusions regarding the value of hand analysis to the pediatric exam, I do take issue with Johnson and Opitz regarding their definition of hand readers as " non medical people who use the lines in the hand to predict the past and future,' and also on their treatment of Elizabeth Squire's analysis. Squire included several other markings (i.e., Big thumb, long upper Apollo, whorls on the Moon and under the Apollo and Mercury fingers) before reaching her "unusual person" conclusion. Nor is she attempting to discuss the Simian Line and its implications in detail, a topic covered much more fully in many palmistry books.

In overly simplifying and misrepresenting her, Johnson and Opitz misrepresent all of hand analysis. Their slight is all the more deep in that they have appeared to go to such lengths to understand palmistry's viewpoint. It seems to me, they had their conclusions in mind before they investigated.

The last system at which we will look is that of Dar and Schmidt (1976). They are the latest to propose a uniform system of classification. They write: "As the variability and possible clinical significance of palm crease abnormalities receive greater attention, an accurate objective method for evaluating palm crease variants is required."⁹

Well said. Their approach seems so obvious it is surprising that scientists have not attempted this before. Noel Jaquin, in Secrets of Hand Reading,¹⁰ used a similar method in the 1930's. Dar and Schmidt draw a network of coordinates over the palmar surface and then measure line variables. (Figure #4, below)¹¹ This research is promising, but seems to have been passed over by their colleagues for no apparent reason.

Dar and Schmidt also studied newborns at risk in 1977.¹² In this study, they ignore their own prior study and go back to the shotgun approach of Lieber. (Figure #5, above). As it now stands, the medical profession is still in search of a workable scientific system of line classification, one detailed enough to yield significant data, yet simple enough to be used by an average doctor without specialized training. Perhaps someday, they may discover the system (palmistry) that has been patiently waiting thousands of years to bee discovered.

¹ "On the Formulation of Palmar Creases," Chaube, R. and Bali, S.,Z. Morphol. Anthropol, 63 (1) =, 121, 1971 [back]
² "The Single Palmar Crease and its Clinical Significance in a Child Development Clinic," Johnson, CF, MD and Opitz, E., Clinical Pediatrics, 10(7), 392, 1971  [back]
³ "Topographic Approach for Analysis of Palm Crease Variants," Dar, H and Schmidt, R, Journal of Medical Genetics, 13:310, 1976   [back]
⁴ "Palmar Creases and Schizophrenia," Chaube, R. and Bali, S., International Symposium on Human Genetics, Waltair, India, 1971  [back]
⁵ "Unusual Palm Creases and Unusual Children," Johnson, CF, MD and Opitz, E., Clinical Pediatrics, Feb. 1973, 101  [back]
⁶ "Zur Systematik und Klinischen Bedeutung des Menschlichen Hand furchenbildes," Lieber, B., Z. Menschl. Vererb. Konstit., 35:205, 1960  [back]
⁷ Ibid  [back]
⁸ Fortune in Your Hand, Elizabeth Squire, NY, Signet Books, 1968, p. 102 [back]
⁹ Dar and Schmidt, op. cit.  [back]
¹⁰ Secrets of Hand Reading, Noel Jaquin, Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons and Co., LTD, 1936  [back]
¹¹ op. cit. P. 310 [back]
¹² Palmar Crease Variants and their Clinical Significance: A Study of Newborns at Risk," Dar, H and Schmidt, R and Nitowski, HM Pediat. Res., 11:103, 1977, p. 105  [back]