Anomalies of the Color of the Hair

Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
by George M. Gould, M.D., Walter L. Pyle, M.D.

(Page 15 of 53)

New-born infants sometimes have tufts of hair on their heads which are perfectly white in color. Schenck speaks of a young man whose beard from its first appearance grew white. Young men from eighteen to twenty occasionally become gray; and according to Rayer, paroxysms of rage, unexpected and unwelcome news, diseases of the scalp such as favus, wounds of the head, habitual headache, over-indulgence of the sexual appetite, mercurial courses too frequently repeated, too great anxiety, etc., have been known to blanch the hair prematurely.

The well-accepted fact of the sudden changing of the color of the hair from violent emotions or other causes has always excited great interest, and many ingenious explanations have been devised to account for it. There is a record in the time of Charles V of a young man who was committed to prison in 1546 for seducing his girl companion, and while there was in great fear and grief, expecting a death-sentence from the Emperor the next day. When brought before his judge, his face was wan and pale and his hair and beard gray, the change having taken place in the night. His beard was filthy with drivel, and the Emperor, moved by his pitiful condition, pardoned him. There was a clergyman of Nottingham whose daughter at the age of thirteen experienced a change from jet-blackness of the hair to white in a single night, but this was confined to a spot on the back of the head 1 1/2 inches in length. Her hair soon became striped, and in seven years was totally white. The same article speaks of a girl in Bedfordshire, Maria Seeley, aged eight, whose face was swarthy, and whose hair was long and dark on one side and light and short on the other. One side of her body was also brown, while the other side was light and fair. She was seen by the faculty in London, but no cause could be established.

Voigtel mentions the occurrence of canities almost suddenly. Bichat had a personal acquaintance whose hair became almost entirely gray in consequence of some distressing news that reached him. Cassan records a similar case. According to Rayer, a woman by the name of Perat, summoned before the Chamber of Peers to give evidence in the trial of the assassin Louvel, was so much affected that her hair became entirely white in a single night Byron makes mention of this peculiar anomaly in the opening stanzas of the "Prisoner of Chillon:" -

"My hair is gray, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night. As men's have grown from sudden fears."

The commentators say that Byron had reference to Ludovico Sforza and others. The fact of the change is asserted of Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI, though in not quite so short a period, grief and not fear being the cause. Ziemssen cites Landois' case of a compositor of thirty-four who was admitted to a hospital July 9th with symptoms of delirium tremens; until improvement began to set in (July 13th) he was continually tormented by terrifying pictures of the imagination. In the night preceding the day last mentioned the hair of the head and beard of the patient, formerly blond, became gray. Accurate examination by Landois showed the pigment contents of the hair to be unchanged, and led him to believe that the white color was solely due to the excessive development of air-bubbles in the hair shaft. Popular belief brings the premature and especially the sudden whitening into connection with depressing mental emotions. We might quote the German expression - "Sich graue Haare etwas wachsen lassen" ("To worry one's self gray"). Brown-Sequard observed on several occasions in his own dark beard hairs which had turned white in a night and which he epileptoid. He closes his brief communication on the subject with the belief that it is quite possible for black hair to turn white in one night or even in a less time, although Hebra and Kaposi discredit sudden canities (Duhring). Raymond and Vulpian observed a lady of neurotic type whose hair during a severe paroxysm of neuralgia following a mental strain changed color in five hours over the entire scalp except on the back and sides; most of the hair changed from black to red, but some to quite white, and in two days all the red hair became white and a quantity fell off. The patient recovered her general health, but with almost total loss of hair, only a few red, white, and black hairs remaining on the occipital and temporal regions. Crocker cites the case of a Spanish cock which was nearly killed by some pigs. The morning after the adventure the feathers of the head had become completely white, and about half of those on the back of the neck were also changed.

Dewees reports a case of puerperal convulsions in a patient under his care which was attended with sudden canities. From 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. 50 ounces of blood were taken. Between the time of Dr. Dewees' visits, not more than an hour, the hair anterior to the coronal suture turned white. The next day it was less light, and in four or five days was nearly its natural color. He also mentions two cases of sudden blanching from fright.

Fowler mentions the case of a healthy girl of sixteen who found one morning while combing her hair, which was black, that a strip the whole length of the back hair was white, starting from a surface about two inches square around the occipital protuberance. Two weeks later she had patches of ephelis over the whole body.

Prentiss, in Science, October 3, 1890, has collected numerous instances of sudden canities, several of which will be given: -

"In the Canada Journal of Medical Science, 1882, p. 113, is reported a case of sudden canities due to business-worry. The microscope showed a great many air-vesicles both in the medullary substance and between the medullary and cortical substance.

"In the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1851, is reported a case of a man thirty years old, whose hair 'was scared' white in a day by a grizzly bear. He was sick in a mining camp, was left alone, and fell asleep. On waking he found a grizzly bear standing over him.

"A second case is that of a man of twenty-three years who was gambling in California. He placed his entire savings of $1100 on the turn of a card. He was under tremendous nervous excitement while the cards were being dealt. The next day his hair was perfectly white.

"In the same article is the statement that the jet-black hair of the Pacific Islanders does not turn gray gradually, but when it does turn it is sudden, usually the result of fright or sudden emotions."

D'Alben, quoted by Fournier, describes a young man of twenty-four, an officer in the regiment of Touraine in 1781, who spent the night in carnal dissipation with a mulatto, after which he had violent spasms, rendering flexion of the body impossible. His beard and hair on the right side of the body was found as white as snow, the left side being unchanged. He appeared before the Faculte de Montpelier, and though cured of his nervous symptoms his hair was still white, and no suggestion of relief was offered him.

Louis of Bavaria, who died in 1294, on learning of the innocence of his wife, whom he had put to death on a suspicion of her infidelity, had a change of color in his hair, which became white almost immediately. Vauvilliers, the celebrated Hellenist, became white-haired almost immediately after a terrible dream, and Brizard, the comedian, experienced the same change after a narrow escape from drowning in the Rhone. The beard and the hair of the Duke of Brunswick whitened in twenty-four hours after hearing that his father had been mortally wounded at the battle of Auerstadt.

De Schweinitz speaks of a well-formed and healthy brunette of eighteen in whom the middle portion of the cilia of the right upper eyelid and a number of the hairs of the lower lid turned white in a week. Both eyes were myopic, but no other cause could be assigned. Another similar case is cited by Hirshberg, and the authors have seen similar cases. Thornton of Margate records the case of a lady in whom the hair of the left eyebrow and eyelashes began to turn white after a fortnight of sudden grief, and within a week all the hair of these regions was quite white and remained so. No other part was affected nor was there any other symptom. After a traumatic ophthalmitis of the left and sympathetic inflammation of the right eye in a boy of nine, Schenck observed that a group of cilia of the right upper lid and nearly all the lashes of the upper lid of the left eye, which had been enucleated, turned silvery-white in a short time. Ludwig has known the eyelashes to become white after small-pox. Communications are also on record of local decolorization of the eyebrows and lashes in neuralgias of isolated branches of the trigeminus, especially of the supraorbital nerve.