Hands and heads

Everyone wants to know the answer to the questions like these: How many times will you fall in love? How many children will you have? How long will you live? Are you a kind person? Could you be a good artist? Some people believe that it is possible to find the answers by looking at parts of the body.

Have you ever had your hands read? On the palm of your left hand you can see the three most important lines. Palm readers call the line nearest the fingers the heart line, and say that it gives information about your feelings – a long line shows that you are a loving person. Next is the headline: the longer it is, the more intelligent you are! The bottom line is your life line, which tells you about your health and how long you will live. In general, if the line breaks, it shows where you have had, or will have a problem in your life.

Palm readers say that the left hand does not change during your life. It shows the kind of person that you were when you were born. But the lines on the right hand do not stay the same all your life, because they show how you can change as you grow older.

If there are a lot of differences between your hands, you have made a lot of changes in your life. But there have been no scientific tests that show this to be true.

At the end of the eighteenth century, an Australian called Franz Gall was the first scientist to say that the brain controlled thinking and feeling. He thought that different feelings happened in different parts of the brain. Gall was partly right, but when he started to match parts of the head with different activities, he began to make mistakes. For example, he had a couple of friends with big eyes, who were also good at remembering. So he decided that remembering happened in the part of the brain just behind the eyes.

Later, in the nineteenth century, people became very interested in ‘phrenology’. They used to feel the heads of their friends and family in order to discover more about them. You can still find old model heads which show the different places for imagining, deciding, laughing, being friendly or angry – and even for staying young!

Scientists now use machines to see exactly where electrical activity is happening in the brain when we do different things. So we know that these old model heads were wrong – but the main idea behind them is right.

(from Strange but True by Alison Baxter, Oxford Bookworms Factfiles, Oxford University Press 2000)

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