In a lecture given before The Child-Study Society in London, Mr. P. B. Ballard, London County-Council Inspector of Schools, stated that left-handed bowlers send down the ugliest balls, left-handed boxers deal the most unexpected blows — blows that hurt terribly. To be left-handed, it seemed, was to be not merely awkward, but to be wicked, moreover.
Yet any attempt to inter- fere with a child's natural habit is liable to make him stammer. (The evil bent of left-handed persons has a special significance in view of my hypothesis of the dissimilar mental functions of the two brain-hemispheres. The term " sinister " expresses this bent. The inference is that in such transposition of the normal functions of the brain-halves, the tempering and humanising influence of the Woman-half is counteracted.)
Of a group of 545 left-handed children, 1 per cent, of pure left-handers stammered, against 4*3 per cent, of 399, in course of being taught to use the right hand, Mr. Ballard further stated. In another group of 207, the figures were 4'2 per cent, and 21*8 per cent, respec- tively. Six out of ten left-handed children who had been taught to use the right hand were practically cured of stammering after having been allowed to use the left hand exclusively for eighteen months.There are twice as many left-handed boys as left-handed girls; and stammering is twice as prevalent among boys. All of. which indicates normal differences in function of the two sides of the body — differences suggesting that, as I have surmised, each is the site and the agency of a principle totally unlike that of the other.
