From 16th-century occult physicians influenced by the Kabbalah to 20th-century geneticists, and from criminologists to eugenicists, Bashford takes us on a journey into the strange world of hand readers, revealing how signs on the hand have been elaborately decoded over the centuries. Sometimes learned, sometimes outrageously deceptive, sometimes earnest, and, more often than we ever expected, medically and scientifically trained, these palm readers of the past prove to be essential links in the human quest to peer into bodies, souls, minds, and selves. Drawing telling parallels between the divination promised by palmistry and the appeal to self-knowledge offered by modern genetic testing, this book also makes clear that palm-reading is far from a relic or simple charlatanism. This sagacious history of human hands touching and connecting opens wide the essential human pursuit of what lies within and beyond.