HOW THE FEELINGS AFFECT THE HAIR. 159 



came still further blanched. He resolved never to go to sea again, and kept 

 his resolution. 



" A lady, travelling in France subsequently to the Franco-Prussian War, 

 heard of a considerable number of cases of hair blanching (more or less marked) 

 in consequence of fright." 



Dr. Laycock, in speaking of pigmentation of the hair, asks whether 

 grayness and baldness are due to loss of tone of the hair-bulbs solely, 

 or are ultimately associated with trophic nervous debility of certain 

 unknown nerve-centres. He points out that the regional sympathy 

 which characterizes trophesies is well marked, and that, as regards 

 baldness, it extends from two points, the forehead and the vertex, 

 ending at a line which, "carried round the head, would touch the oc- 

 cipital ridge posteriorly, and the eyebrows anteriorly." So with the 

 beard, etc. In connection with a succeeding remark, that the eyebrows 

 are a clinical region in brow-ague, herpes, and leprosy, the case already 

 referred to, of a woman who suffered in the night from a severe attack 

 of tic, and found in the morning that the inner half of one eyebrow 

 and the corresponding portion of the eyelashes were perfectly white, 

 may be mentioned. Laycock points out the fact that the hair over the 

 lower jaw is almost always gray earlier than that over the upper jaw, 

 and that tufts on the chin generally turn white first. {Op. cit., 

 May 13.) 



" Mr. Paget, in his ' Lectures on Nutrition,' has recorded the case of a lady 

 with dark-brown hair, subject to nervous headache, who always finds, the 

 morning afterward, patches of her hair white, as if powdered with starch. In 

 a few days it regains its color. Dr. Wilks says he has on more than one occa- 

 sion had a lady visit him with jet-black hair, and on the morrow, when seen in 

 bed, it had changed to gray. Bichat, opposing the skepticism of Haller, as- 

 serted that he had known at least five or six examples in which the hair lost 

 its color in less than a week ; and that one of his acquaintance became almost 

 entirely blanched in a single night, on receiving some distressing news. There 

 is no reason to call in question the statement that Marie Antoinette's hair 

 rapidly turned gray in her agony. We have it on the authority of Montesquieu 

 himself that his own hair became gray during the night, in consequence of re- 

 ceiving news of his son which greatly distressed him. Dr. Laudois, of Griefs- 

 walde, reported not long ago a case in 'Virchow's Archives,' in which the 

 hair rapidly turned white. But I have not any particulars at hand beyond the 

 fact that, on carefully examining the hair, he found that there was ' an accumu- 

 lation of air-globules in the fibrous substances of the hair.' Erasmus Wilson 

 read a paper at the Royal Society in 1867 on a case of much interest, a resume 

 of which I subjoin in a note." ' 



1 Every hair of the head was colored alternately brown and white from end to end. 

 The white segments were about half the length of the brown, the two together measuring 

 about one-third of a line. Mr. Wilson suggested the possibility of the brown portion 

 representing the day-growth of the hair, and the white portion the night-growth, and this 

 opinion was corroborated by the remarks of Dr. Sharpey and others of the Fellows who 

 took part in the discussion. Under the microscope, the colors of the hair were reversed, 

 the brown became light and transparent, the white opaque and dark ; and it was further 



