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Editorial
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When he wrote the fourth in the series of eight ‘Bridgewater Treatises on the Power and Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation’ on The Hand: its mechanisms and vital endowments as evincing design in 1833, Sir Charles Bell explained that his motivation was that of the anatomist wishing to refute the representation of life as the mere physical result of certain combinations and actions of parts; and his text moved from the definition, evolution and comparative anatomy, and structure and function of the hand towards a broader account of sensibility, touch and muscular sense, and the hand as the instrument of complex bodily, social and cultural activities: ‘the hand is not a thing appended, or put on, like an additional movement in a watch; but a thousand intricate relations must be established throughout the body in connection with it ... the power of the hand ...
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