HAND AND BRAIN.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 296, 15 August 1908, Page 2

HAND AND BRAIN.

® The wonderful effect upon the brain produced by systematic hand culture, more particularly in the matter of two-handed writing, is the subject of an interesting statement by Dr. Manfred Fraenkel, of Berlin. At least 9-5| per cent, of all people, Dr. Fraenkel points out, are right-handed, and accordingly the location for the pictures of the recollection is the left brain, which in consequence of the crossing of the nerves in the spinal marrow, has to control the right hand. Dr. Fraenkel proceeds : — “ As everything is subject to the left brain (the right-hand provider), all our thoughts, feelings, actions, writing, and motions the right brain does not influence at all. Examinations on patients whose right hand was paralysed by a fit of apoplexy, and who have to rely only on the right half of the brain, have proved that the persons, suddenly deprived of the use of the tongue and of all the movements of the right side, are not capable of doing anything with the left hand, which is now without a guide. “ During the course of my ex-

aminations I have found a possibility of helping these poor creatures to new signs of life, and that simply by exercising the left hand. I have come to the conclusion that normal persons likewise will succeed in making the left hand equal to the right one by practising the left hand and by developing to higher perfection the right hemisphere of the brain. “ We. succeeded with a patient, paralysed on the right side, by dint of systematic writing with the left hand. He regained bis power of speech, which he had lost. His linguistic capacity of the right side, although existing, but not cultivated before, had been awakened to full activity. Another stroke affecting the light side, again deprived him of the slight flexibility of the right hand which he had just regained, but — as a proof of my principles beingright —his speech remained.”