THOUGHTS ON THE ACCOMPLISHMENT AND POSSIBILITY OF THE HUMAN HAND:STERLING BUNNELL TRAVELING FELLOW REPORT 2000-2001 BY AMY L. LADD, MD The author reports her experience as the Sterling Bunnell Fellow, illustrating the relationship between congenial limb differences, evolution, and developmental anatomy in both a social and scientific context. In this essay, she explores the ties between the human perception of the beauty and importance of the hand, and its actual purpose and design. Copyright © 2003 by the American Society for Surgery of the Hand A s the 2000-2001 Bunnell Traveling Fellow, I embarked on a sojourn to weave the threads of how congenital limb differences, evolu- tion, and developmental anatomy are intertwined, in both a social and scientific context. I planned to visit sites that contributed to my understanding of how the human hand has evolved, what can go wrong, and why the hand is perceived to be an emblem of our human- ity. Museums of all sorts formed the core of my travels, ranging from archives in art to collections in anatomy. I also planned to visit centers where scien- tists and doctor philosophers create experiments to better understand morphology, development, and anomalies of the upper limb. The premise for my travels may be summed up as follows: The human hand shows us who we are, where we have been, and where we are going. The historian as a social scientist gathers evidence to test a hypothesis, and it is in this role that I From the Stanford Hand and Upper Limb Center, Stanford, CA. Address reprint requests to Amy L. Ladd, MD, Stanford, CA. E-mail: alad@stanford.edu Copyright © 2003 by the American Society for Surgery of the Hand 1531-0914/03/0302-0009$30.00/0 doi:10.1016/S1531-0914(03)00030-5 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR SURGERY OF THE HAND  VOL. 3, NO. 2, MAY 2003 117