AMBIDEXTER, a person who can use both hands with the same facility, and for the same purposes, that the generality of people use their right hand. As to the natural cause of this faculty, some, as Hæfer, attribute it to an extraordinary supply of blood and spirits from the heart and brain, which furnishes both hands with the necessary strength and agility; others, as Nicholas Massa, to an erect situation of the heart, inclining neither to the right hand nor the left; and others, to the right and left subclavian arteries being of the same height and the same distance from the heart, by which the blood is propelled with equal force to both hands. But these are only conjectures, or rather chimeras. Many think that, were it not for education and habit, all mankind would be ambidexters; and, in fact, we frequently find nurses obliged to be at a good deal of pains before they can bring children to forego the use of their left hand.