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The right hand

Chapter 2: PREFACE
By Sir Daniel Wilson
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About This Book

The author surveys the hand's anatomy and functions, then traces left-handedness through archaeological, linguistic, and physiological evidence, arguing that preference for one hand has deep prehistoric roots and varied cultural responses. He examines how education, social stigma, and language have shaped attitudes toward left-handed people, analyzes dexterity shown in Paleolithic artifacts and handwriting forms, and discusses competing theories about neural control and psycho-physical mechanisms. Historical and comparative data are used to challenge efforts to suppress natural handedness and to recommend systematic training of skill in both hands as beneficial to individuals and society.

TO
HIS GRANDSON
OSWALD GEORGE WILSON BELL
 THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR

PREFACE

The following treatise includes data originally accumulated in a series of papers communicated to the Canadian Institute and the Royal Society of Canada, aiming at determining the cause of Left-handedness by a review of its history in its archæological, philological, and physiological aspects. In revising the materials thus accumulated in illustration of the subject, with a view to their publication in a connected form, the results of later investigation have been embodied here, not only with the aim of tracing Left-handedness to its true source, and thereby proving the folly of persistently striving to suppress an innate faculty of exceptional aptitude, but also to enforce the advantages to be derived by all from a systematic cultivation of dexterity in both hands.

Bencosie, Toronto,
24th April 1891.