Bone · Hand

Phalanges of the hand

Phalanges manus

The phalanges of the hand are the finger bones — three in each finger and two in the thumb, fourteen per hand. They are miniature long bones, and they contain no muscle at all: every finger movement is produced by tendons reaching in from muscles in the forearm and the palm. That is why a finger stays slim enough to be precise, and why forearm problems show up as finger problems.