THE CHIGNON FUNGUS. 
BY TILBURY FOX, M. D. 
_ Norse could more clearly have shown the amount of 
ignorance of the natural history of minute life abroad 
amongst the public, and the little trouble people will take 
to make the most trivial use of their common sense, when 
a novelty, embellished by plausible description, is pre- 
sented to them, than the rampant nonsense which has 
been penned and believed in regard to the so-called gre- 
garine infesting certain varieties of false hair. The 
“chignon controversy” has been one of the most wide- 
Spread, but at the same time transient sensations of the 
age: started abroad, it soon reached England, where it 
bewildered the fashion worshippers of the day. The im- 
mediate cause of this hubbub was the appearance in the 
Hamburg paper Der Freischiitz, of the 7th of February, 
1867, of an artigle based upon the account given in the 
“Archiy der Gerichtlich Medicin und Hygiene,” and in 
which we are informed that “Mr. Lindemann professes to 
have discovered and observed a new microscopical para- 
site, to which he has given the name of Gregarine. He 
reports, according to his observations, that the gregarine 
—a protozoic animaleule—is of the lowest order of de- 
velopment of the animal organism, and is found parasit- 
ically within the animal and human body, where it floats 
about with the blood, by which it is nourished. The 
Most striking instance of the parasitism of the gregarine 
18 said to be its existence on the human hair. The gre- 
garinous hair, however, differs in no way from the sound 
hair. Only if one looks very closely, little dark brown 
knots, which are generally at the free end of the hair, 
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