The dumb language or the art of talking with the fingers

The dumb language or the art of talking with the fingers.

Coloured line engraving, published: Bowles & Carver, 69 St. Pauls Church Yard, London (Wellcome Library, London).

Chirologia, or the naturall language of the hand. Composed of the speaking motions, and discoursing gestures thereof, by John Bulwer 1644.

John Bulwer (1606-1656), was a doctor, who lived around Gray's Inn in London. One of only 31 known copies, Chirologia (which means 'hand discourse') was the first book in English that was devoted to the language of sign and gesture.

"As the tongue speaketh to the ear, so the gesture speaketh to the eye." So Francis Bacon quoted King James in his introduction to The Advancement of Learning. Aristotle had omitted gestures from his Organon & Bacon saw the close relationship between gestures & the mind. Bacon's gentle criticism of Aristotle here was the inspiration for Bulwer to write his Chirologia, a term he introduced into English. It has been said of Bulwer that "his works more nearly approach modern psychology in character than those of his illustrious philosophical contemporaries."

(Graham Richards, 'Bulwer, John (1606-1656)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008).

Bulwer's social circle seems to have been around Gray's Inn, a short walk from the Action on Hearing Loss Library. He was buried in the nearby church of St. Giles in the Fields.