Medicine: The Heart & the Palm

For roughly 2,500 years, the franchised readers of the human palm have been gypsies. Last week, not from a tearoom but from the cardiac clinic of New Orleans' Charity Hospital, came a new palm reading technique—one that may help doctors to learn more about congenital heart defects.

Substituting an anatomical science—palmar dermatoglyphics—for the ancient pseudo-science of chiromancy. Doctors Alfred R. Hale, John H. Phillips and George E. Burch examined the palm prints of 287 patients, half of whom had congenital heart defects and the other half heart disease acquired later in life. They knew that myriads of tiny creases called axial tri-radii are formed in the palm during the first four or five months of fetal development and, like fingerprints, remain unchanged for life. (These intricate patterns bear no relationship to the impermanent palm lines gypsies call heart, head and life lines.) What the doctors suspected was that disturbances that cause congenital heart defects would be reflected in a unique palm pattern.

They were right. In the A.M.A. Journal, the research trio reported that the tri-radial crosshatches of congenital heart cases were etched nearer the center of their palms twice as often as those who had developed heart disease later. The pattern also tended to be more disorganized in the hands of congenital heart patients—a possible result of the same mysterious mechanisms that cause abnormalities to develop in the fetus.

The doctors emphasized that their discovery is not a diagnostic technique but a tool of basic scientific research that may help them decide whether individual cases of congenital heart defects are caused by genetics or by trouble in the womb. Can a layman tell the difference between "normal" and "abnormal" palm configurations? "No," says Dr. Hale, "and he shouldn't try."