Left-Handed Twins

Some 30 years ago left-handed Auguste Piccard, gangling, mischievous Munich student, had a barber-shop shave, bet the barber that "his whiskers grew faster than any others in the world." Shortly after "he" reappeared at the barber's with an eighth-inch beard. The flabbergasted barber shaved, learned later that "he" was Jean, Auguste's right-handed twin. Last week as he waited for redoubtable Professor Auguste Piccard's ship to come into New York Harbor, Jean Piccard, who until last year was a Hercules Powder Co. chemist and lives at Marshalltown, Del., voiced some cogent observations concerning twins (see col. 3).

The Champlain stopped at Quarantine. Manhattan ship reporters leaped aboard, gathered in the children's play room. Professor Piccard reluctantly (he fears the Press; TIME, Jan. 16) descended from the captain's bridge, sniffed at the reporters, ran. They were smoking, "a dirty habit that should be banned from America by the Government, instead of moderate alcoholic drinking."

The detailed report of his pulling a dog's teeth to protect his children, he confusedly denied after his lecture bureau manager had wirelessed him that U. S. animal lovers were protesting his admittance to the country. Cried the Professor: "Am I a dog dentist? Such a thing to say of me! I who love dogs!" In his denial, the dog became a rosebush, the teeth thorns.*

At the Manhattan pier were Twin Jean Piccard, Mrs. Jean Piccard (also a twin), their sons Jean Auguste, Paul, Donald. Physicist Auguste and Chemist Jean embraced,/- Uncle Auguste pulled a black beret from an overcoat pocket, offered it to Nephew Jean Auguste.

Nephew: But, Uncle Auguste, I have never worn a hat in my life!

Uncle: Ah! This one, my dear Jean, has been in the stratosphere.

Nephew Jean Auguste took the beret, but would not wear it. His younger brothers looked on shyly.

After hasty acclimatization in Manhattan, Professor Piccard went to Washington, was received by President Hoover. In his schedule was a lecture before the National Geographic Society, a conference with President Paul Weeks Litchfield (Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp.), a meeting with the Lindberghs.

The New York Evening Post was the only Metropolitan newspaper to develop the story in Chemist Jean Piccard. The article swiftly became a significant, lucid disquisition on identical twins, i.e., twins conceived in the same ovum as were Auguste & Jean Piccard.* Said Chemist Jean Piccard: "It is a well-known fact that usually one of two identical twins is left-handed while the other one is righthanded. It is well known also that there are many more left-handed persons who never had any twin.

"We may, therefore, either assume that there are two entirely different kinds of left-handedness with two entirely different causes or that all the left-handed people are--originally--twins. The other twin may have died in infancy or may have been still born.

"In the latter case the mother will often not even have knowledge of the fact that she ought to have had twins. We have evidence, however, that in many more cases the twin has died during the earliest stages of his embryonic life. . . .

"My brother is lefthanded, but he has acquired a complete ambidexterity. Many modern physicians advise against forcing a left-handed child to use his right hand instead of his left. It may produce serious trouble like stuttering and confusing right and left in reading./- Such people will read 'pots' for 'spot' and so on.

"When, however, the instruction to use the right hand is given very early in childhood and if it is given without severity but with kind persistency then such trouble need not develop. No such difficulties have been met by my brother, nor with two of my boys who were born lefthanded.

"The early discovery of left-handedness is of prime importance. Fortunately the direction of the spiral of the hair at the back of the head is a good indication of the handedness of any human being. Right-handed people have their hair turn clockwise, left-handed people have it turn counter clockwise."

*There is a common European wild rose called the dog rose (Rosa canina). It has stout, hooked thorns.

/-Their father was Jules Piccard, professor of chemistry at the University of Basle. A third son, Paul, helped install the first hydro-electric turbines at Niagara Falls.

*Fraternal twins are from companion ova.

/-By learning to use his left hand, right-handed stuttering David St. Clair of the University of Oklahoma got rid of his impediment, won a 1932 Rhodes Scholarship. Rhodes Scholars must be, apart from brilliant scholarship and civilized deportment, fluent talkers. At the University of Iowa Professor Lee Edward Travis announced as a discovery "that nerve impulses which dominate the two sides of the speech mechanism are strikingly dissimilar when a person stutters."

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