Rechts-und Linkshändigkeit

Abstract

THE chief interest of the treatise under consideration consists in the exposition of a variety of conditions which, in the author's opinion, are associated with that commonly known as right-handedness, a condition which is generally assumed to refer to a greater physical development and functional employment of that side of the body. Moreover, the author seeks to refer all the phenomena upon which his extended conception of right- (or left-) handedness is based to a common cause, which he finds in the existence of a higher degrée of blood-pressure in the vessels of one side of the head (and in the common instance, viz. the right-handed one, in the vessels of the left side) than in those of the other. Dr. Lueddeckens is thus firstly concerned to prove the existence of such an inequality in blood-pressure as has just been mentioned, and the earlier pages of his book are devoted to this part of the subject. From an account of the embryological history of the arterial system, and the departures from original bilateral symmetry which that system presents, we are led (p. 8) to a study of the hydrodynamic conditions obtaining in the aortic arch in the living subject, and in this connection it is argued that the circumstances are such as will produce a higher blood-pressure in the left than in the right common carotid artery. The greater frequencies of cerebral hæmorrhage, and of embolism of the arteria centratis retinae on the left side of the brain, are urged in further support of this view.

Rechts-und Linkshändigkeit.

Dr. Fritz Lueddeckens Pp. vi + 82. (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1900.)