Dr Allen Dalzell on the Colour of Hair. 331 



fur becomes white on the approach of winter. With age, 

 also, its colour disappears, and very generally, though not al- 

 ways, with the loss of its pigment, the vigour of this append- 

 age declines. The hair is frequently tinged by the absorp- 

 tion of materials introduced along with the food. The hairs 

 of a rat taken from a ship with a cargo of logwood were ex- 

 amined, and they were found to be deeply coloured with the 

 dye. The Chinese have long enjoyed the credit of being 

 able to alter the colour of the hair by the administration of 

 certain drugs, either from white to coloured, or from one 

 colour to another. At this moment, I know a gentleman in 

 Paris who has for some years been engaged in the investi- 

 gation of this curious subject, which the following incidents 

 will sufficiently illustrate. 



At one of the meetings for 1839 of the Society Philomatic 

 of Paris, the case of M. L'Abbe Imbert was detailed. He 

 left for China in 1823, carrying with him a luxuriant crop of 

 carroty locks. His friends in the celestial empire fearing, 

 on that account, his detection as a foreigner, and his conse- 

 quent expulsion from the country, shut him up on his arrival, 

 and, by an internal course of constitutional treatment, speedily 

 turned to black the hair on every part of his body. 



At the same meeting, the case of the Abbe Voisin was re- 

 lated by M. Roulin. He had white hair on his arrival in 

 China, but was subjected to a treatment consisting of internal 

 remedies only, the result of which was, that it permanently 

 became black. 



Under no less creditable an attestation than that of Vel- 

 peau, we are informed that the hair of M. Rochoux changed 

 from white to black ; in this case, however, without the aid 

 of any medicament, merely by the re-absorption of that co- 

 louring matter which had been temporarily destroyed. I 

 had an opportunity last autumn of observing the effect of a 

 chronic attack of jaundice upon a relative of my own, whose 

 hair was white, but became distinctly coloured with the yel- 

 low colour of the bile. Bush mentions the hair from the 

 tattooed chin of a New Zealand chief being coloured with the 

 pigment introduced into the skin. 



But the most singular instances of change in colour are 



