While searching on the 'Ben Carson Story' on Google I came across a community enterprise called 'The Gift of Hands,' which is based in Co. Mayo. Here members of the local community meet to design, make/create original art to sell to the tourist market. It's a super endeavour. What a gift our 'hands' are:

These Old Hands by Emma Campbell

These old hands are wrinkled
There’s a brown spot here and there
The nails are worn off to a quick
No sign of polish anywhere


But these old hands tell a story
And if you’d care to stay
I’ll tall you for the service
They’ve done from day to day

The human hand is composed of 27 bones plus numerous tiny sesamoid bones that are in the hand’s tendons. In order to have the hand work in a coordinated fashion add in 29 joints and at least 123 named ligaments. 34 muscles are in charge of moving the fingers and thumb: 17 in the palm of the hand, and 18 in the forearm. 48 named nerves: 3 major nerves, 24 named sensory branches, 21 named muscular branches. 30 arteries and nearly as many smaller branches are named.

I am sure you know that no two human beings in the world have similar fingerprints. The fingerprints of twins can be indistinguishable in some respects but still they never match exactly.

The palm and the skin on the underside of the fingers is a unique area of the human body. For a start, it has no hair and is composed of tough durable but incredibly sensitive skin. Did you know you can’t get a tan on your palm?