John Bulwer b. 1606
John Bulwer was an English physician and philosopher who
wrote five works exploring the body and human communication. He suggested that
much of our gesturing is intuitive and inherently natural to mankind, and he
record the vocabulary contained in over 100 hand gestures and bodily motions,
producing Chirologia, alongside a companion text which featured
illustrated hand and finger gestures that were intended for an orator to
memorise and perform whilst speaking, primarily from the pulpit. His described
gestures included wringing the hands to convey grief, and pretending to wash
your hands as a way to protest innocence. Bulwer’s theories had their roots in
classical civilisation, including the works of Aristotle b. 384BC.
Bulwer’s Pathomyotomia was the first substantial English language work
on the muscular basis of emotional expressions. Bulwer later became one of the
first to propose educating deaf people.
Read Chirologia: The Natural History of the Hand
(1644)
