The development or non-development of the joints of the fingers is a very important consideration in the reading of the hand. The joints are, figuratively speaking, walls between the phalanges, and are important indications of the peculiarities as well as of the temperament of the subject.
When the subject has what are known as smooth joints he is more inclined to be impulsive in thought and to arrive at conclusions without using the reasoning faculties. With square hands this is very much modified, but not by any means eradicated. Consequently a scientific man with square fingers, but with smooth joints (Fig. 1, Plate IX.), will jump at conclusions without being always able to account for them. Such a doctor will diagnose a patient in the same way; if the man be really talented he may be very accurate in his conclusions, but such a man is more apt to make mistakes than the man with the square type with developed joints. With the pointed hands the smooth joints are purely intuitive (Fig. 2, Plate IX.); they cannot be troubled with details of any kind; they are also careless in dress, appearance, and in little matters. Such a person in business affairs could not keep papers and little things in their places, although he would be very particular in insisting upon order in other people.
The opposite is found in the case of people with the developed joints (Fig. 3, Plate IX.). Work has nothing to do with the increase or diminution of such formations; the smooth joints are as often found among men who do the hardest kind of manual labor as the knotty or developed joints among men who do nothing but mental work. They are sometimes found running in families for generations, or appearing in one child and but slightly found in all the others. In the breeding of animals it may be observed, en passant, how often little peculiarities of this kind occur, and also how significant they p. 52 are. Thus, when one considers how wonderful are the laws of heredity, he will study these “little things” with greater interest. For instance, there is that well-known fact that if a woman gives birth to a child by her first husband, children who follow by the second, third, or even fourth husband, as the case may be, all in some slight way exhibit the peculiarities of the first husband.
The developed joints being the opposite of the smooth, it follows that they show more exactness in method and work. In this case, a man with the square hand and developed joints, engaged in some scientific pursuit, does not care how much time he spends in working out details in connection with any science in which he is engaged. It is the same reason that makes the philosophic hands so exact about detail in connection with their work. The owners of these joints notice the slightest thing out of place in even the arrangement of a room. They worry over little things, though in important matters they will be cool and calm. Men with these developed joints have an almost feminine instinct in matters of dress—they class and blend color well, and nothing will irritate them more than to accompany a woman the colors of whose costume do not harmonize. In dramatic work, people with such joints are careful and accurate in the delineation of character, but lack dramatic breadth and force. Outside of science, they perhaps make their best mark in literature, because of their extraordinary power of analyzing human nature, and because of the true instinct and knowledge of humanity which seems to come to them without effort. We must therefore draw the deduction that these developed walls or joints between the phalanges, figuratively speaking, stop the tide of impulse, and make the nature more observant, thoughtful, and analyzing.