Is Man a Lopsided Animal?

1895

The Subject Discussed From a Variety of Interesting Standpoints.

Man at best is an ungainly animal. His head is an irregular spheroid; his eyes are not alike or of equal efficiency; one shoulder is higher than its neighbor; one hand and one foot are larger than their corresponding organ. Despite the fact that the shape, size and color of the ear differ more widely in individuals than any other organ of the human body, they are probably more alike on the same head than any other of the twin organs. If one ear is delicate in shade, the other will be the same; if one looks like a dried fig or a conchshell, the other is likewise so. With the eyes, however, matters are different. One eye is nearly always more open than its friend over the bridge, while in many cases people, while apparently looking with both eyes, only use one, and makers of firearms, in making guns to order, carefully allow for the right or left sightedness of the sportsman for whom they cater. Broadly speaking, women are more often left sighted than men, and when they do happen to be right sighted they are so in less degree than the sterner sex.

The reason why the left shoulder is frequently farther from Mother Earth than the right lips in the fact that while writing most men rest the left elbow on the table, while in the case of porters loads are carried on the right shoulder. With an ablebodied man there is very little difference in the length of the limbs, but the hands and feet are usually widely different in the matter of size. The right hand is the bigger, while, curiously enough, the left foot covers the greater amount of ground.

Ladies have a certain unreasoning sense of satisfaction when they say that they wear fives in gloves, because, if this is a fact, then the human hand has grown smaller within the last 20 or 30 years, which state of affairs, however, may be questioned when the glovemakers tell their story. Gloves are all marked half a size smaller than they really ought to be, which is the fatal result of the habit in which ladies indulge of almost invariably asking for gloves a size smaller than they can comfortably wear.

The left leg is better developed than the other male carrier on account of the fact that we stand habitually on the left foot and mount a bicycle or horse and kick a man while balancing on the left leg. Most men jump chiefly off the left leg.

Lateral curvature of the spine occurs more frequently to the left than to the right, indicating that the body in sitting is thrown more to the left than to right. This leads to the remark that nothing is more injurious, for the young especially, than to sit for any length of time in one position. — Albany Times-Union.