MANUAL DEXTERITY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10022, 19 April 1910, Page 4

MANUAL DEXTERITY.

It is so unlike Sir Frederick Treves to incline to a pessimistic view where the future of the race is concerned, that anything he may say regarding the decline, or even the limitation of the ingenuity of the human machine, arrests attention. Discussing the very suggestive question, "Are we losing the use of our hands?" the great surgeon propounds the theory that handicraftsmanship has a limit just as there is a limit to the power of vision and of hearing:. He denies that m<m, as a master of handicraft.

is becoming every year more adept, and boldly proclaims that wa are losing the use of our hands. Thifcontention is supported by references to two of the commonest handicrafts—writing and .sewing. These, Sir Frederick points out, are rapidly being supplanted —the one by the typewriter and the other by the sewing-machine. And than we are invited to cons der the purely manual side of surgery. This handicraft the writer points out, reached a point of perfection in the pre-anaesthetic days when swiftness and facility of operations were demanded in their highest forms. Now, with the use of anaesthetics, the surgeon can proceed with easy deliberation, every step can be judged and measured, there is no call to be brilliant, there is'no element of hurry. Hir Frederick concludes with regret that in the uae of our hands the highj est point of development has baen passed, and that we have now entered upon a period of decline. While the : writer's eminence as an authority upon matters of this kind cannot be seriously disputed, it is still open to grave question whether the reasons for the faith that is in him sufficiently cover the ground. To quote a single instance: The importance of "hand and eye" training was never more intelligently appreciated in education than at the present time. The tremendous strides made by the technical school system stands in further prooi that we are not losing the use of our hands. Manual dexterity in industrial activities is not required where certain functions, formerly performed by hand, are discharged by machinery, but, at the same time, the field for manual enterprise is constantly widening, and it would probably be found that the average merit of handicraftsmanship nowadays is much higher than ever it has been before. ' I