Historian Alison Bashford on hand reading
While palmistry is now more of an entertainment, it's also been inextrictably intertwined with medicine. That path from chiromancy - or hand reading - in late medieval times, to modern genetics, has been charted by historian Alison Bashford. She reveals how signs on the hand - its shape, lines, marks, and patterns - have been elaborately decoded over the centuries. Her fascination with chiromancy was sparked when she came across a handprint of a gorilla that had died in