JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

J.W. Conway launched this missive into the world in 1935–at a time when left-handedness was deemed to be unacceptable and curable–adding his anti-left-handed sentiments to a teetering pile of other alien attacks.  Mr. Conway’s The Prevention and Correction of Left-Handedness in Children appeared in 1936, at a time in which he and others saw left-handedness as a deterrent to succeeding in the newly industrialized world.  The pamphlet emphasizes the training of children from infancy to overcome left-handedness, which came as a result of parental “indifference”, who were unable to “realize the seriousness of the handicap”, which was a “sinisitrial condition”, a “disease” that needed to recognized along the same lines as “rickets and pneumonia and colic”.  Much needed to be done to “stamp out the newly recognized disease, the curse of left-handedness”. 

I guess Mr. Conway hadn’t realized that Albert Einstein–the most famous person in the world when this booklet was written–was a lefty, and somehow avoided his “disease” and succeeded in spite of himself.  As did Plato. And Leonardo, Jan van Eyck, Rembrandt, Holbein, Van Gogh, and  Klee. (And in the modern world, some great lefties include SpongeBob, Patrick Starfish, Mrs. Puff, Peter Griffin, Bart Simpson, Marge Simpson, and Bobby Hill. AND Sandy Koufax, Randy Johnson, Warren Spahn, Whitey Ford, and of course Lefty Grove.)