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Jack R. Harnes, MD
New York

JAMA. 1982;248(23):3095.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Intrigued by the description of Aristotle's anomaly in THE JOURNAL (1982;248:89), I set out to confirm his observation.

My initial assumption was that the index and middle fingers should be crossed. I did this both ways and inserted the pencil between the shafts of the fingers and between the tips of the fingers (except that I could not get a pencil between the tip of my index and middle finger when the index finger was on top). I did not feel two pencils.

I then crossed my thumb and index finger in both directions and inserted a pencil in various positions and again felt only one pencil. The following three possibilities come to mind:

1. 1. Aristotle's observation may not have been accurate. In fact, one might question whether a pencil was available to him, since the Encyclopaedia Britanica reports they were first invented in 1565.
   
2. 2. I
   

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