ABSTRACT
“Cheiro” describes the line of Health (Plate XII) as running down the hand from the base of the little finger to the line of Instinct, predicting death at the point where the two lines meet. Desbarolles, on the contrary, describes the line as going up the hand; but he attaches such a superfluity of meanings to a long line— viz., “good health, rich blood, harmony of the fluids, a grand memory, a good conscience, probity, and success in affairs”—that he is hardly to be regarded as a sane and balanced critic of the evidence that may reasonably be deduced from the line of Health. Good health may go with virtue; but there are also healthy villains in the world.
