Ambidexterity, or, Two-handedness and two-brainedness : an argument for natural development and rational education / by John Jackson ; with an introduction by R.S.S. Baden-Powell.

  • Jackson, John, active 1894.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ambidexterity, or, Two-handedness and two-brainedness : an argument for natural development and rational education / by John Jackson ; with an introduction by R.S.S. Baden-Powell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    297/324 (page 267)
    Once more, in the hundred-and-one occupations of the file, cutlery, and hardware industry, those only who are acquainted with the demands made upon human endurance, and with the great proportion of workers who succumb to the strain of one-handed labour in file-cutting, knife-grinding, riveting, &c, &c, ad infinitum, can ap- preciate the inestimable value of such an innovation as this scheme contemplates, and the relief it proposes to bring to overstrained muscles, aching backs, and exhausted brains. One-handed labour in file-cutting, means, of course, the continual unchanged use of the hammer by the one right (or dextral) hand, and the total absence of alternate use in the tools that necessarily engage both hands simultaneously during the execution of the work in that, or any other, occupation. Ambidexterity will be, to countless thousands of our artizans, a perfect Godsend, that nothing else can pro- vide and that nothing else can approach unto. So, we shall get better work and better workmen, longer and stronger lives, improved health, and therewith brighter and happier homes than can be obtained under existing conditions. Universal two-handedness is the leaven that will per- meate every home and every section of the community; that will shed its beneficent rays upon and extend its priceless privileges to every class, to every individual, and to every interest of humanity. It must be so, it cannot be .otherwise, else physiology, hygiene, logic, nature, common sense, and unanimous experience are alike misleading and unreliable. It seems a pity that people should be so utterly apathetic on the subject, even where their most vital interests are involved; and it is equally a matter of regret that the inertia of this apathy is well nigh irre- sistible and insurmountable. Of course, the public is so used to new inventions, marvellous discoveries, wonder-