PreHistoric Hand Analysis
The reading of hands is nothing new; it is believed to date back as far as 5,000 years to the ancient cultures of Egypt, China and India. Of course, as an esoteric art, hand reading or palm reading has been around since we have had hands! I love to imagine our prehistoric ancestors sitting and comparing grubby hands as they sat around the campfire gnawing on some mammoth bone or another.
The Ancient Chinese use inked fingerprints on a vast variety of legal documents…everything from land deeds to contracts to land debts. By 246 BC, Chinese officials pressed their fingerprints in clay seals, which were then used to seal official documents.(see picture) There is proof of a trial around 300 BC where a handprint was used as evidence in a theft trial. When silk and paper came into widespread use parties put their handprints on legal document. Fingerprints were able to be used to establish identity in courts over business conflicts, but historians are not sure if the Chinese were aware of the uniqueness of the fingerprints or if there were some type of spiritual significance given to the touching of the finger to the paper. I like to think BOTH.
In 14th century Persia, many official government papers had fingerprints used for identification and one government official, a doctor, noticed that no two fingerprints were exactly alike.
In many ancient, and some not so ancient, cultures the punishment for committing an offense was the cutting off of the hand that was used to commit the crime.
Why Do WE Have Fingerprints????
It is fun to ferret out all the fascinating info available on FINGERPRINTS….here is a great link to a podcast and a bit of info on WHY we have fingerprints? Click and Enjoy!
Cancer Drug Causes Fingerprints to Disappear
Report: Xeloda caused redness, peeling to 62-year-old’s fingers
LONDON - When a cancer patient from Singapore traveled to the United States last year, he discovered an unusual side effect of his medication: missing fingerprints.
The 62-year-old man was taking capecitabine, or Xeloda, to treat head and neck cancer. Upon arriving in the U.S., immigration officials asked him for his fingerprints. But the drug had caused so much redness and peeling to his fingers that the patient, identified only as Mr. S., had none.
Customs officials held Mr. S. for four hours before deciding he was not a security threat, according to the case published Wednesday in a letter to the Annals of Oncology journal.
Capecitabine is a common cancer drug, routinely given to patients with head, neck and kidney cancers as well as lymphomas and leukemias. Doctors said very few patients temporarily lose their fingerprints while on Xeloda, but it does happen.
“Most patients will complain they’re having difficulty holding things or sensing things,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, who was not linked to the case. “I’ve never had a patient running into a problem with police authorities, but this is not an exaggeration. It could actually happen.”
After returning home, Mr. S. asked his oncologist, Dr. Eng-Huat Tan at the National Cancer Centre in Singapore, to write a letter certifying he was on capecitabine.
Surprised by Mr. S.’s predicament, Tan recommended in his letter to the journal that patients taking capecitabine carry a similar doctor’s note if they are traveling to the United States.
Unlike most other countries, American immigration officials take two fingerprints from foreign visitors.
Tan said up to 40 percent of patients on the drug develop a side effect known as hand-foot syndrome, which causes redness, peeling, numbness and tingling. Of those patients, only a small percentage actually lose their fingerprints.
“Patients probably would not notice anything until they travel to the U.S. and discover to their horror that their fingerprints are gone,” Tan said. Mr. S. was Tan’s only patient to report such a predicament, but Tan said a handful of other cases were described on cancer blogs.
Once patients stop taking the drug and apply ice to their hands, their fingerprints will return in about a month.
Brawley guessed that U.S. officials became suspicious because criminals sometimes erase their fingerprints with sandpaper or dip them in acid, which would appear very similar to how Mr. S’s fingers looked.
But he says there are too many side effects from Xeloda, including a weakened immune system and increased cancer risk, that it would be unlikely anyone would take the drug for less-than-honorable reasons.
“No criminal in his right mind would take this drug to try to get rid of his fingerprints,” Tan said.
Sharing…A Fascinating Article About Fingerprint History
Fingerprints By Karl S. Kruszelnicki
Sherlock Holmes was able to finger crooks by examining their footprints, though nowadays, the police use fingerprints, not footprints, to track down criminals. But it seems fingerprints might also give the medical profession some vital clues - about your future diseases.
The pads on your fingers are not perfectly smooth, but they have tiny ridges and valleys on them - supposedly to increase the friction, and give you a better grip. When you wrap your hand around a glass, and then remove it, you can see the impression of those ridges on the glass - your fingerprints.
Fingerprints have been used for identification for thousands of years. The ancient Chinese and Assyrians used fingerprints on legal documents. The ancient Kings of Babylon would press their entire right hand into a slab of clay carrying a decree, before it was fired. Even back then, it was a common belief that no two people shared the same fingerprint.
The first person to solve a crime with fingerprints was a Scottish doctor working in Japan, Henry Faulds. He matched the fingerprints found on a cup at a robbery in Tokyo with those of a servant, and described this feat in a letter to the prestigious science journal, Nature, in 1880.
In July 1892, an Argentinian police officer, Inspector Alvarez was investigating a crime in which two children had been beaten to death. Inspector Alvarez found a bloody thumb print on the door, so he just sawed out that section of the door, and took it along to the Police Station.
He then had the children’s mother fingerprinted, and when she learnt that her own thumb print matched the thumb print on the door, she confessed to the crime. Shortly after, Argentina became the first country in the world to use fingerprints as the chief method of identifying offenders.
The famous American gangster John Dillinger burnt his fingerprints off with acid - but he could have saved himself the intense pain, because they grew back. John Phillips another gangster, had new fingerprints grafted onto his finger pads - but the police convicted him because they got a match with the prints further down his fingers.
There are three basic patterns used to classify fingerprints - the Arc, the Loop and the Whorl. The easiest way to picture them, is to imagine that you’re looking at a map with contour lines, to show the hills and valleys - like a military map or a bushwalker’s map. An ‘arc’ is a gentle rise, a ‘loop’ is a ridge, while a ‘whorl’ is a solitary hill or peak.
But the patterns of your fingerprints also have a medical significance. One study in India involved some 150 adult males, 90 of whom had duodenal ulcers. It found that there was a slight tendency for people with whorls to have more duodenal ulcers. Another study looking at American Japanese in Hawaii showed that if men had more whorls on their fingers, they were more likely to have a heart attack.
But it was a study by Professor David Barker, head of the Medical Research Council’s Environmental Epidemiology Unit at Southampton General Hospital, which found that whorled fingerprints were associated with high blood pressure in adults.
He was examining high blood pressure, and was checking up records of various maternity units. He noticed that if babies had been born very thin, they were more likely to have whorls on their fingertips and to have high blood pressure when they became adults.
Now he and his team are not exactly sure what’s going on, but it is well known that fingerprints are already laid down by the 19th week of gestation in the womb. And it’s also known that if the foetus has flattened finger pads, it’s more likely to have the simpler arch pattern or the slightly more complicated loop pattern.
But on the other hand, if the foetus had swollen finger pads, it’s more likely to have a complex whorl pattern of ridges. But why would a baby who was going to be born thin, have fat finger pads?
One possible theory to explain this is that a fetus which is in distress might have a higher blood pressure, and this higher blood pressure and higher blood flow could show itself as increased swelling in the fingertips. But they’re really not sure why there is a link between whorls and high blood pressure - but they do know the link is there.
Now it’s still early days in this research, so there’s no point in getting a magnifying glass and looking at your fingertips and getting paranoid. You should be proud of your fingerprints - they’re your very own personal ID, which you always carry with you.
Various organisations try to collect fingerprints, but it’s the FBI that has the biggest collection. They have over 170 million sets of fingerprints - but then, so does every house with small children!
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Fingerprint
Anthropologists in Italy have pieced together Leonardo da Vinci’s left index fingerprint.
The discovery could help shed light on a wealth of information including the food the artist ate and whether his mother was Arabic.
The reconstruction of the fingerprint is the result of three years of research and could also help attribute disputed paintings or manuscripts, said Luigi Capasso, director of the Anthropology Research Institute at Chieti University in central Italy.
“It adds the first touch of humanity. We knew how Leonardo saw the world and the future … but who was he? This biological information is about his being human, not being a genius,” Mr Capasso said.
The research was based photographs of about 200 fingerprints - most of them taken from about 52 papers handled by Leonardo in his life.
The artist often ate while working and Mr Capasso and other experts said his fingerprints could include traces of saliva, blood or the food he ate the night before - information that could help clear up questions about his origins.
For instance, experts determined that the fingerprint suggested Leonardo’s mother was of “oriental origin”.
“It’s not like every population has typical fingerprints, but they do have specific proportions among their signs.
“The one we found in this fingertip applies to 60 per cent of the Arabic population, which suggests the possibility that his mother was of Middle-Eastern origin,” Mr Capasso said.
The idea that Leonardo’s mother could have been a slave who came to Tuscany from Constantinople - now Istanbul, Turkey - is not new and has been the object of other research.
Mr Capasso’s work is on display in an exhibition in the town of Chieti until 30 March.
FROM AOL UK
The Main Fingerprint Types
WHORL: The Whorl takes the longest to form in the womb. It consists of one or more ridges which make or tend to make a complete circle and it has a characteristic circle or bulls-eye look to it. The circle closes completely. The Whorl can be found in several variations, see the ones with the red center showing how the circle can be different from one Whorl to the next. Probably 35% of all fingerprints are Whorls.
Subcategory : A Composite WHORL or Composite consists of two separate loop formations, with two separate and distinct sets of Looping actions.
Subcategory : The Peacock is a cross between a Loop and a Whorl. It is like a Loop that has a small Whorl in the center.
LOOP is that type of pattern that looks like a balloon coming in from one side or the other. In 80% of the Loops, they come from the Ulnar side (the Little Finger). In 20% of the Loops they come from the thumb or Radial side. Probably 60% of all fingerprint are Loops.
The other 5% or so of fingerprints are divided among arches, tented arches and all the rest of the variations. If you have any of these, they are considered “kinda rare.”
TENTED ARCH is that type of pattern which possesses either an angle, an up thrust, or two of the three basic characteristics of the arch. It looks exactly like an upside down T with a simple arch across the top of it.
ARCH is that type of pattern in which the ridges enter upon one side, make a rise or wave in the center, and flow or tend to flow out upon the opposite side. This is the simplest pattern, yet so elegant.
Of course, there are sooo many combinations and it all sounds so easy the way I have written it here…trust me, the minute you look at a few hands you will be stumped at some of the amazing combination fingerprints you see.
What IS My Life Purpose? Why Do I Keep Making The Same Mistakes? Why Are My Relationships A Mess?
Knowing WHY we are here is one of the BIG questions that can be a constant, sometimes incessant, refrain in our heads. A lucky few seem to be born knowing their life path and trot merrily along…never second guessing themselves. The rest of us, and I ever-so resoundingly include myself, must search, look for and strive to find the ANSWER, never suspecting that The Secret Is In Your Hands.
We each came into this lifetime with unique and wonderful life-markers created just for us…our fingerprints. Each fingerprint was carefully placed on a very specific finger, giving you clues as to why YOU are here! That is just the beginning, the exquisite lines, the myriad of marks and the shape of our hands also have a hidden message to tell. As part of your extensive consultation, I will create a one-of-a-kind piece of art of one of YOUR hands. We will also work together to create your Soul Mission Statement incorporating your Life Purpose and Life Lessons.
I can work with you in person, via email, or by telephone. I am available for events and am often at area expos.
Let’s Get Started...I can promise my consultation will be sooo worth your time.
