The grayness of hair in advanced life results from a deficient secretion of pigment. Well-authenticated cases are on record in which the hair has grown gray or white in a single night, from the influence of fear. distress, or any variety of strong mental excite ment. It is not easy to explain this phenomenon. Vauquelin suggested that it might result from the secretion at the bulb of some fluid (perhaps an acid), which percolates the hair, and chemically destroys the coloring matter.
The chief use of the hair, and particularly of the fur of various mammals which is especially developed in the winter, is to protect the body from external cold. Except on the scalp, and on the throat, this cannot be considered as applying to man. What, then, are the uses of the hair on the face, and especially on the upper lip? We shall answer this question with an extract from an article "On the Use of the 1-lair" in The _Lancet for Nov. 3, 1860: "Mr. Chadwick, who has done so much for sanitary reform, tells us that he was once very much struck by seeing some blacksmiths w ho wore beards with their mustaches discolored by a quantity of iron dust which had accumu lated amongst the hairs. Turning it over in his mind, it struck him that lied not the dust been so arrested by a natural respirator, it must have found its way into the lungs, where it could not have been otherwise than productive of evil consequences. Ile hence rightly advised that the razor should be discarded by laborers in all dusty trades —such as milieu's, bakers, masons, etc.; by workmen employed in grinding iron, or steel; and by travelers on dusty roads. In hot. sandy countries, the use of the beard is soon discovered; and travelers in Syria and Egypt find it necessary to defend their mouths against the entrance of the hot air of the desert. But not against dust alone is the facial hair a it is the best barrier against cold air. biting winds, and wheezy fogs that a Northman can obtain According to Mr. Chadwick, the sappers and miners of the French army, who are remarkable for the size and beauty of their beards, enjoy a special immunity against bronchial affections." In corroboration
of the last-named fact, we may mention another of a still more striking chnracter. During the long-continued search for Franklin's expedition, a vessel, the North Star, was frozen up during one of the severest arctic winters on record. in Wol stenholme sound. The crew maintained their 'melt), perfectly during all the trials to which they were exposed. On their return to England in the early S11111111er, they shaved off the hair that had been growing around the mouth and throat for the last eight or nice mouths, and withima every man was on the sick list with some form of bronchial or tiulinonaty diserder.
The length to which the hair of the head may grow normally, in women, is very considerable. In the " Hair Court" of the international exhibition (1862), there was a of jet-black hair (British, we believe,) measuring 74 Cases occasionally occur where there is an abnormal abundance of hair of consider able length in women, on parts where the hair is usually little more than down. A hairy lady, named Julia Pastrana, supposed to be a Mexican, Was some years ago exhibited in London. Her embalmed body was exhibited also in that city in 1862, and we extract the following remarks from a memoir on her in The Lancet for May 3 of that year: cars, and all parts of the face except the eyes, were covered with hair of different lengths. The beard was tolerably thick, the hairs composing it being straight, black, and bristly, the part of it which grew 00 the sides of the chin banging down like two plaits. . . The upper portion of the back of the neck and the hinder surface of the cars, were covered with hairs. On the shoulders and legs, the hairs were as abun dant as they are occasionally seen on very powerful men." Dr. Cho wne has described similar but less marked cases of hairy women in The Lan cet for 1843.