Bell's on hand

This morning, I had occasion to take another look at Bell's book of the hand, that is to say, reference 1. An interesting volume telling me a lot more than I really need to know about the mammalian hand. But including the fact that you can tell a great deal about an animal and its habits from either its shoulder blade or its humerus, that is to say the bone of the upper arm. An animal is in this sense a much more tightly integrated object than a computer program: you cannot usually tell much about what such a program does just because, for example, it includes a large subroutine devoted to the calculation of sines. It might be sensible to think in terms of a functional module called the hand, but the functions of the hand reach into the detail of the shoulder and upper arm in a way that the subroutine does not reach into the program into which it has been inserted.

This book being the fourth Bridgewater treatise on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God as manifested in the creation. And with Bridgewater being an aristocratic parson who, in 1829, left the Royal Society (of London) the then considerable sum of £8,000 to publish said treatises.

Charles Bell was an eminent surgeon, anatomist and artist of the nineteenth century, this despite his somewhat mixed record as an army surgeon. I have been unable to find out whether he was part of what became the whisky family. But while godly, clearly on the progressive wing of the church: he does recognise geology, the fossil record and evolution.

The book comes with lots of good quality illustrations, which I presume were originally drawn by the author, before being converted into wood blocks for printing by an engraver.

My copy originally came from the Sandeman Library in Perth, named for a Cambridge professor who came from a Perth textile family. I have been unable to find out whether he was anything to do with the famous port of the same name.

At some point, the Sandeman Library was taken into the A. K. Bell Library, also of Perth. And this library was endowed by and named for the whisky Bell.

PS 1: I have also been reminded of the existence of the megatherium, a very large but extinct sloth from South America, Bell having made various predictions on the basis of a scapula, the only arm bone available to him. The image above of the skeleton in the Natural History Museum was taken from Wikipedia. No doubt, when the business of the Elgin marbles is sorted out, the Brazilian authorities will start pressing for the return of their national treasure. See reference 3 for recent notice of same.

PS 2: a little later: some discouraging news from the FT: 'The secretive company [Palantir], co-founded by Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook and prominent supporter of former US president Donald Trump, is now manoeuvring to expand its reach into the NHS over the next decade'. If our fat leader keeps his chair, what's the betting that these manoeuvres will hit the pay dirt? Will any likely successor be worse?

References

Reference 1: The Hand: Its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design, and illustrating the power, wisdom , and goodness of God – Sir Charles Bell – 1874. Ninth edition.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bell.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/medical-vocabulary.html.