The nomenclature of dextral, sinistral and attentional organs and functions.

  • Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The nomenclature of dextral, sinistral and attentional organs and functions. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    c [Reprinted THE NOMENCLATURE OF DEXTRAL, SINISTRAL AND ATTEN- TIONAL ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS In the Popular Science Monthly, August, 1904 (republished in Biographic Clinics, Yol. III.), I made some suggestions as to the nomenclature of the organs and functions pertaining to right-handedness, left-handed- ness, etc. After a more extended study and experience of the subject I recognize that I made some errors and more omissions, and these I may now correct. The terms right- handed and left-handed are so firmly fixed in the language, and so recognized as expressing the unconscious choice and superior expert- ness of one or the other hand for certain tasks, that it is useless to attempt putting them aside for more accurate words. Estab- lished usage and habit make language and govern the world. “ Eight-handed,” “ left- handed,” etc., imply nothing of expertness, etc., literally, but usage has put such mean- ings into them. Terms merely localizing the organs without added significance must therefore be devised, e. g., dextral, sinistral, dextromanual, dextrocular, and all the rest. To extend the idea of expertness to the cor- responding organs, right-eyed, left-eyed, right- footed, right-eared, etc., may be used after the analogy of right-handed. The words ambidextral and ambidexterity should never be used by sensible persons. No one has yet existed wiith two dextral hands; no left-handed person has ever been trained to have an equal proficiency or expertness of each hand for all tasks; it would be most undesirable and wasteful of life to have such equal expert- ness; all or most such attempted training results in unhappiness, confusion, inexpert- ness and disease; the right-handed, accord- ing to the crazy theory, should be trained to an equal and ludicrous sinistromanual ex- pertness, etc. The violinist should bow or finger equally expertly with each hand; the pianist play upon a reversed keyboard, the base notes to the right, half the time; soldiers should carry their guns and swords half the time in the left hand, step-off with the right foot first on alternate days; and all sewing, writing, use of the knife and fork, handsha- king, etc., done alternately with the sinistral and the dextral hands, etc. As to right-eyedness, left-eyedness, etc., there is a world of new facts coming to light of profound importance, medically, surgically, socially, and especially to the person abnormal in these respects. In practical ophthalmology, “ dominance ” of the dextral eye in the right- handed, and the preservation of it, or reestab- lishment of it when lost (vice versa in the case of the left-handed), is of vast import, possibly to the life of many individuals. With divided or alternate dominance one of my patients was constantly making mistakes, confused, run- ning into objects, steering his automobile into collisions, etc. (The tests are many and easily made: For instance, looking through the held-up pencil or finger at the opposite wall, an image, one image, of the pencil is seen by the dominant eye—the dextral, of course, normally, in the right-handed, the sinistral in the left-handed. If the dextral is the domi- nant eye, then by putting something over the left, the image will not be displaced; if the dextral eye is shut off, the image of the pencil will “ jump ” to the right. If the sinistral is the dominant eye, the reverse will take place.) If two images are seen, then the person has divided dominance or equidomi- nance, and he is a patient, having confusions of mind and action which may cause acci-