Finger Prints As Clues To Disease

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 18, 10 November 1950, Page 6

Finger Prints As Clues To Disease

By Trevor Williams, Deputy Editor of the quarterly scientific magazine Endeavour. Research carried out at New Scotland Yard, the centre of Britain’s criminal investigation department, suggests that finger prints, the patterns of which have long been recognised as unique for every human being, may in future have considerable value in diagnosing disease. Results obtained in this remarkable new branch of medicine have recently been described by Superintendent F. R. Cherrill, Chief of the Fingerprint Branch, whose experiments have been carried out in collaboration with other medical experts. Study of this completely new field of research was prompted by an all-too-common part of routine police work—the examination of dead bodies. Experience over many years led to the observation that, as a general rule, after death the left hand, no doubt because it is in life less hardened by use, shows more rapid signs of' decomposition than the right. This suggested that careful examination of the left hand might disclose early evidence of the onset of diseases of certain types, and experiments have gone far toward confirming this supposition.

In making diagnoses by this new method the clues are not to be found in the complex patterns of the whorls which are used criminologically for purposes of identification. These patterns are formed even before birth and remain unchanged throughout life and no two people, not even identical twins, have ever been found to possess precisely the same pattern. For diagnosis reliance is placed on quite different markings, creases which run across the ordinary whorls and appear, when fingerprints are taken by tho ordinary method of inking, as short white lines.