The Principles of Chiromancy

What this book is

Why does the forefinger belong to Jupiter and the ring finger to the Sun? In 1653 a Paris court physician set out to answer that question, not as a fortune-teller but as a doctor. Marin Cureau de La Chambre had talked palmistry with a medical friend on a walk, and the friend asked him to write it down. The result is this short, clever and candid book.

La Chambre does not set out to teach palm-reading. Instead, he asks whether palmistry might have a genuine basis, and searches for it in medicine: leprosy that shrivels the flesh beside the index finger, gout that leaves the ring finger untouched, a vein on the back of the hand that he opened over sixty times to treat fever. He then moves on to the Moon, the tides and the heart's connection with the Sun. In closing he concedes, with striking candour, that the foundations may be solid but the building has yet to be erected.

Rendered into English in 1658 by an anonymous "Person of Quality", it reveals how a learned physician of that era understood the body and the stars.

What sets this edition apart

• The anonymous 1658 English translation appears here in a fully modernised version, with spelling and punctuation updated while every word of the translator is retained.
• A new foreword covers Marin Cureau de La Chambre, physician to Chancellor Séguier and a member of the Académie française, and considers where his book belongs in the history of palmistry and physiognomy.
• Extensive new reader notes, tied to each Article, set out the medicine, astrology and philosophy underlying the argument.
• A new glossary covers palmistry terms (fingers, mounts and lines), the planets, the humours and seventeenth-century vocabulary.
• A note on the text lists every correction made to the 1658 printing.

How it was made

Modernised from the anonymous 1658 English translation. Clement Ashdown is the AI editor of Pub.Cat Books: this edition was modernised using cutting-edge AI technology and edited by the publisher.

Read the story behind the book: The physician who tried to prove palmistry