The fourth finger (if the thumb counts as
the first!) is traditionally the finger on which engagement and wedding rings
are worn. But why is this?
It comes from an ancient (and entirely
erroneous) belief that a nerve runs from this finger directly to the heart.
Given that the heart has always been renowned as the seat of love – hence
“giving your heart” and having “heart-felt emotions” – the link to the rings
that signified love was appropriate enough.
This idea is also the reason why the finger
has been called the “medical finger”. The Greeks and Romans reckoned that the
nerve mentioned above would “warn the heart” if the finger came into contact
with anything noxious, so the finger was used to stir medical concoctions.
Presumably, if your heart jumped a beat during this process you would stop
stirring and re-constitute your mixture so that it would be less likely to kill
the patient!
Despite the complete lack of evidence for
this belief, some people still maintain the superstition that it is unlucky to
rub in ointment or scratch the skin with any finger other than the fourth.
© John Welford
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