A Short History of Fingers

Fingers are good for you. They play a tremendous part in your day-by-day existence and if you didn't have them, life would be infinitely more difficult.

If man were born without fingers Nature would probably compensate by putting additional vigor into the toes and making them larger and much longer than they are now. (Shoes would have to be bigger and would cost more, and God knows they cost enough as it is.) Many little acts and duties which we perform today with our fingers would then be performed with our toes. If you would appreciate the full importance of such a state of affairs, please try to visualize Winston Churchill giving the "V for Victory" sign with his toes.

Fortunately our race has had fingers as far back as we can trace history. It is obvious that if earliest man had been without fingers the whole pageant of civilization would have been radically different. Assuming that Eve could grab hold of things only by using her toes, she would have had to stand on her head in order to pluck that apple, and I doubt if she'd have gone to all the bother. And what of the Netherlands? I think it probable that there would be no Holland today. That little boy who held his finger in the dike -- he couldn't very well have done the job with his nose.

Anatomists and medical men have their own names for the fingers, beginning with pollex(for the thumb) and continuing through index, medius, annularis and minimus. The gloriously-fingered man in the street is familiar with only one of these terms: index. The digit which we call the index finger was originally known among the Anglo-Saxons as the towcher. The Anglo-Saxons were notorious for their bad spelling ("Sumer is icumen in; Lhude sing, cuccu!") and the word they spelled towcher means, simply, toucher. The towcher was the finger used for touching. It was always called the towcher in towns and cities where, presumably, a large amount of touching was done. Out in the country the towcher had another name: the scite-finger. This word actually means "trigger-finger" and we can only assume that country people were more inclined to shoot something than to touch something.

On the other hand the ancients who lived across the channel on the Continent believed that the index finger was just about the worst finger a person could possibly use for touching. It was poisonous, they said, and if it were used to touch a wound, that wound would never heal. It was loaded with toxins, hence they kept it well away from their soup.

The middle finger doesn't seem to have any history at all. Nature apparently just stuck it in there to keep the others apart. In mythology the middle finger is mentioned somewhat vaguely in connection with Saturn. Since Saturn was the god of agriculture, perhaps this finger served as the world's first dibble. A dibble is a pointed instrument for poking holes in the ground preliminary to planting. This is pure speculation on my part and the Dibble Theory probably wouldn't hold up in court. I don't think I'd ever use my middle finger as a dibble.

Biographical material is also wanting on the little finger. We do know that the Anglo-Saxons called it the ear-finger because it was most easily introduced into the ear. When I was a boy in the Mid-west a common thing was to see a grown-up stick his little finger in his ear, with the rest of the hand held at jawbone level, fingers folded, and then waggle the hand vigorously up and down. An uncle of mine told me that this maneuver relieved the pressure on the brain. I have never had occasion to use it.

The opposable thumb is, of course, a great source of wonder to anthropologists who consider it a more revolutionary development than the wheel, the printing press, the magnetic tack-hammer or Togetherness. I think the story of the opposable thumb is quite fascinating (Hollywood could make a fine movie of it) and I don't want to belittle it at all, yet my own favorite among the fingers is the leche-man. The leche-man is the ring finger. Leche is the way Anglo-Saxons spelled "leech" and "leech" means doctor and so it came about in the olden days that this finger was known also as the "medical finger." The Greeks and Romans believed that it contained a special nerve that ran through the finger itself, up the arm, across the chest and into the heart. So they, the Greeks and the Romans, used that finger for stirring things. If the brew they were stirring contained anything in the way of poison, a warning was transmitted along that special nerve, straight to the heart. They must have believed strongly in this theory. If you doubt it, just try to stir something with your ring finger; it would be easier and more graceful to use your elbow. Still, the theory of the medical finger survives to this day in parts of England, where the inhabitants are careful to use that finger in applying salves or medical ointments to the body. Moreover, they use the same finger exclusively when they want to scratch an irritated spot. I have seen a cultured Englishman remove his bowler and scratch his scalp with his medical finger. It looks silly, but it is just as natural for him to do it that way as it is for him to retain his fork in his left hand throughout a meal. He isn't really conscious of what he's doing.

Now, why do we call this particular digit the ring finger? The expression derives from those same Greeks and Romans. They reasoned that if this finger contained the super-nerve leading straight to the heart, then this finger was the proper place to install a wedding ring. The theory got fouled up a bit when it was translated from Latin into English. In 17th Century England we find one Henry Swinburne, an ecclesiastical lawyer, writing a book about romance and matrimony in which he said: "The finger on which this ring is to be worn is the fourth finger of the left hand, next unto the little finger; because there is a vein of blood which passeth from that fourth finger into the heart called vena amoris, or love's vein." So, it became a vein of blood rather than a nerve. Why quibble?

Sad to relate, the Greeks, the Romans and Henry Swinburne were all in error. In modern days experiments have been undertaken to determine the degree of sensitiveness of each of the fingers. These experiments show that the index finger is the most sensitive of the lot, the middle finger ranks next, then the thumb, after that the little finger and, finally, the ring finger. And George Stimpson has written: "The fourth digit on the human hand is the least mobile, the least sensitive and the least used of all the digits." In other words, the ring finger is a real stupid digit. Like some of our leading television performers, it lacks talent and it lacks personality but somehow it gets along.

Down through the centuries the fingers have been of inestimable importance in every known kind of pursuit except, possibly, grape pressing and the stamping out of forest fires. There was a time back in the Middle Ages and earlier when most people used their fingers instead of paper and pencil whenever they wanted to tackle a problem in arithmetic. I don't mean the simple counting processes which we ourselves employ, such as counting forward on our fingers to determine what day of the month next Tuesday will be, or counting backward on our fingers after hearing the gladsome tidings that a new baby has been born. The ancients went much further than that in their finger calculations. They refused, for example, to memorize the multiplication table on the simple grounds that it was impossible to do so; they learned, instead, to multiply with their fingers. The way they did it, according to the usually reliable Encyclopaedia Britannica, is as follows:

To multiply 8 by 6, turn down 8 -- 5 fingers on one hand and 6 -- 5 on the other. There are then 3 turned down and 2 standing on one hand and 1 turned down and 4 standing on the other. Add the fingers down (3 + 1 = 4) and multiply those standing (2×4 = 8), and the result is 4 tens + 8 units, or 48; that is, in terms of mathematics, ab = t(a -- 5) + (b -- 5)] 10+ (10 -- a) (10 -- b). Numerous variants of the plan were in use, some having been brought to Europe from the Arab schools.

I would like to see some of those variants. I would like to have a whole bunch of variants brought from the Arab schools, because I can't get any right answers with the variant given above. I worked on that problem until my wrists got tired, and then had to give it up.

The most effective way of demonstrating the value of fingers is to visualize a world in which there are none.

Stop right now and hold up a handful of fingers and examine them closely. Pretty crazy looking, aren't they? If you could manage to detach one of them and lay it on the coffee table, it would look even sillier. You'd likely burst out laughing. But you would be doing that finger and all its fellows a gross disservice.

If man didn't have any fingers he would not, of course, know that there (concluded on page 99) Fingers(continued from page 48) ever were any such things as fingers. In such a world, suppose you went to your doctor and he felt your pulse with his toes; you would consider it to be quite the normal thing, even if you had to get down on the floor to make it more convenient for him (it is altogether possible that in a fingerless world the pulse-beat would be in the nose, though some medical men say it would be in the ankles). In other words, you would be accustomed to an existence without fingers, just as a dog is, and it wouldn't bother you. You might observe a group of Italian men playing morra, shooting out their toes and crying "Nóve!" and "Uno!" and "Quattro!" You wouldn't even smile. Your garage mechanic would use his foot to flip open the hood of your car, then thrust it inside and begin tinkering with your carburetor, and you wouldn't give him a second glance.

As I've already suggested, Nature has a habit of compensating for our physical deficiencies. If we had no fingers our bodies would be organized quite differently from the way they are now. I think it probable that we would have an opposable big toe so that we could "handle" tools with our feet. We'd be able to stand on one leg for long periods, like the yellow crowned night heron and the marbled godwit, and thus be able to play baseball. But the changes in body function would be far more extensive than that. We would develop universal joints in our knees and hips in order that we might, with ease, bring our toes into position for such duties as shaving, extracting cinders from the eye, feeding ourselves, applying lipstick and hailing cabs. The custom of tipping the hat would be abandoned; too many men would fall down while doing it.

I've already mentioned the likelihood of our shoes being bigger. On further consideration I think it probable that our shoes would be more like gloves in order that our toes would have greater freedom. With our feet encased in ordinary shoes, we would be unable to cross our toes when passing a graveyard, to snap our toes at a dilatory waiter, to crack our knuckles as a means of finding out who dearly loves us, or to put the whammy on an enemy.

The absence of fingers would be a boon to our teeth. They would grow bigger and stronger so that we could use them for unscrewing caps off pickle jars, changing fuse plugs, picking gooseberries (strawberries would be picked with the toes), and squeezing toothpaste tubes ... hold it! A major problem now arises -- the business of brushing the teeth. I somehow don't warm up to the idea of brushing my teeth with my toes. It wouldn't have to be done that way. We could have fixed, stationary brushes, fasten our mouths over them, and agitate our heads. I tell you, the human brain can solve any problem!

The nose, too, would likely be different -- longer and more rigid at the tip -- so that it could be employed in dialing telephone numbers, operating pop-up toasters, manipulating the thermostat and turning the pages of a book (the tongue would probably be used to turn the pages of a newspaper).

Since we are assuming a world without fingers, what would we have on the ends of our arms in their place? The best scientific opinion available at this moment seems to be that we would have knobs instead of hands. This sounds unpleasant, I know, but knobs have their points. I mean their uses. You wouldn't be able to button your shirt with knobs, but you could mash potatoes. You could do work ordinarily performed with a ball-peen hammer, and think what a cinch it would be to pound flour into a swiss steak.

If we had knobs instead of fingers the world of music would be vitally affected. I can't see how anyone would be able to play a violin or a harp or a Hawaiian guitar or a six-hole flute. Of necessity our symphony orchestras would go in heavily for xylophones, marimbas, kettle drums, possibly harmonicas, and people would still be able to blow into a jug. Yes, I think we'd get along fine with knobs, even though something delicately beautiful would go out of romance, or at least out of romantic writing. Somehow it doesn't sound soul-inspiring to say, "He ran his knobs through her glorious hair."

In the Fiji Islands there are certain savages who cut off their fingers as a sign of mourning after the death of their chief. It is a noble gesture but, like many noble gestures, it is a foolish one. We should not only hang onto our fingers; we should cherish them and protect them against sprains, dislocations, fractures, felons, warts, and all the other ills to which finger-flesh is heir. We should honor them by taking notice of them historically; so far as I know, this is the first history of fingers ever undertaken; Toynbee ignores them altogether. We really need our fingers. Without fingers to snap, today's singers of popular songs would go slack-jawed and mute. Then, too, we've simply got to have something to rub over the lettering of other people's stationery so we can tell if it's engraved or merely printed.