In his first book, Les Mysteres de la Main (1859), Desbarolles begins by trying to convince the reader that his work is based upon the scientific discoveries of people like Gall and Lavater.  He attempts to demonstrate the 'scientific basis' of hand reading by regaling an unlikely tale of a soldier whose lines evaporated  completely from his hands after he was shot in the shoulder, causing damage to to the nerves in his arm.  This apocryphal story is offered as all the proof we need to be assured that the lines of the hand reflect the personaality of the man whose hands they are!  However, attempt at being serious and scientific soon passes and his predilection for the mystical soon comes through. 

Desbarolles approached his study of the hand primarily from the perspective of the cabalistic teachings he had studied under Eliphas Levi. This is particularly reflected in his use of the idea of the 'Three Worlds' of the elemental, the celestial and the intellectual, in his analysis of both the finger phalanges and the palm of the hand itself.  Indeed, he sees the Three Worlds everywhere in the hand, commenting that  "La lettre M que nous avons dans la main indique aussi les trois mondes"  We find his work replete with sections on the kabbalah and the influence of the stars, along with whole chapters on numerology, phrenology and physiognomy. With his repeated discussions of the astral planes and 'le fluide universal', he clearly  adopts a more 'spiritual' stance than the authors he claims precedence from,

After some discussion of the mounts, he goes through each of the seven main lines of the hand in turn and discusses the quadrangle, the triangle and the rascettes, before finishing off with a consideration of the 'signs' and 'marks' that may be found within the palm.  All in all, Desbarolles' writing is very reminiscent of the Renaissance chiromancers who we saw were also influenced by this hotch-potch collection of Hermetic philosophies.  he has merely represented these ideas in a more modern idiom.

In Desbarolles' second book, the monumental work entitled 'Revelations Completes' (1874), whilst he again  discusses the chirognomy of the fingers and the thumb, in contrast to D'Arpentigny, the bulk of this work concentrates on the significance of the lines of the hand.  Over a thousand pages are given over to the illustrated discussion of the significance of various lineal formations.  He writes some novel sections here on the choosing of professions from the hand and discusses the lineal marks of illness and disease, insisting that everything that he writes about has been 'proven' and has been shown to be reliable over twenty years of study.  We reserve the right to be fully sceptical of this claim. As before, also included in this work are sections on phrenology and  astrology and, this time, graphology and pendulum dowsing as well. 

Other Nineteenth Century Palmists

The importance of these two men cannot really be underestimated, for their influence on all subsequent nineteenth century works on hand reading is almost total. Virtually every other author of this period cites their authority and often draws heavily on their discoveries. Many of these later works are really little more than a refinement or simplification of their original ideas. Between them, D'Arpentigny and Desbarolles had laid the foundations for the study of the hand as it was to develop both within Europe and elsewhere throughout the whole of the early modern period.  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there was a tremendous upsurge of interest in all things occult and esoteric and the growth of interest in handreading at this time was phenomenal.

The one work that seems to have ignored most of these developments completely is that of Adele Moreau, who was a student of Marie-Anne Le Normand. Her work 'L'Avenir Devoile, Chiromancie Nouvelle' ('The future foreseen, the new chiromancy') neither adds anything new to the development of chirology nor does it look to the future!