There was much structural change in the brain and spinal cord.
Smyly of Dublin reported a case of suppurative disease of the temporal bone, in which the hair changed from a mouse-color to a reddish-brown; and Squire records a congenital case in a deaf mute, in whom the hair on the left side was in light patches of true auburn and dark patches of dark brown like a tortoise-shell cap; on the other side the hair was a dark brown. Crocker mentions the changes which have occurred in rare instances after death from dark brown to red.
Chemic colorations of various tints occur. Blue hair is seen in workers in cobalt mines and indigo works; green hair in copper smelters; deep red-brown hair in handlers of crude anilin; and the hair is dyed a purplish-brown whenever chrysarobin applications used on a scalp come in contact with an alkali, as when washed with soap. Among such cases in older literature Blanchard and Marcellus Donatus speak of green hair; Rosse saw two instances of the same, for one of which he could find no cause; the other patient worked in a brass foundry.
Many curious causes are given for alopecia. Gilibert and Merlet mention sexual excess; Marcellus Donatus gives fear; the Ephemerides speaks of baldness from fright; and Leo Africanus, in his description of Barbary, describes endemic baldness. Neyronis makes the following observation: A man of seventy-three, convalescent from a fever, one morning, about six months after recovery perceived that he had lost all his hair, even his eyelashes, eyebrows, nostril-hairs, etc. Although his health continued good, the hair was never renewed.
The principal anomalies of the nails observed are absence, hypertrophy, and displacement of these organs. Some persons are born with finger-nails and toe-nails either very rudimentary or entirely absent; in others they are of great length and thickness. The Chinese nobility allow their finger-nails to grow to a great length and spend much time in the care of these nails.
Some savage tribes have long and thick nails resembling the claws of beasts, and use them in the same way as the lower animals.
There is a description of a person with finger-nails that resembled the horns of a goat.
Neuhof, in his books on Tartary and China, says that many Chinamen have two nails on the little toe, and other instances of double nails have been reported.
The nails may be reversed or arise from anomalous positions.
Bartholinus speaks of nails from the inner side of the digits; in another case, in which the fingers were wanting, he found the nails implanted on the stumps. Tulpius says he knew of a case in which nails came from the articulations of three digits; and many other curious arrangements of nails are to be found.
Rouhuot sent a description and drawing of some monstrous nails to the Academie des Sciences de Paris. The largest of these was the left great toe-nail, which, from its extremity to its root, measured 4 3/4 inches; the laminae of which it consisted were placed one over the other, like the tiles on a roof, only reversed. This nail and several of the others were of unequal thickness and were variously curved, probably on account of the pressure of the shoe or the neighboring digits. Rayer mentions two nails sent to him by Bricheteau, physician of the Hopital Necker, belonging to an old woman who had lived in the Salpetriere. They were very thick and spirally twisted, like the horns of a ram. Saviard informs us that he saw a patient at the Hotel Dieu who had a horn like that of a ram, instead of a nail, on each great toe, the extremities of which were turned to the metatarsus and overlapped the whole of the other toes of each foot. The skeleton of Simore, preserved in Paris, is remarkable for the ankylosis of all the articulations and the considerable size of all the nails. The fingers and toes, spread out and ankylosed, ended in nails of great length and nearly of equal thickness. A woman by the name of Melin, living in the last century in Paris, was surnamed "the woman with nails;" according to the description given by Saillant in 1776 she presented another and not less curious instance of the excessive growth of the nails.
Musaeus gives an account of the nails of a girl of twenty, which grew to such a size that some of those of the fingers were five inches in length. They were composed of several layers, whitish interiorly, reddish-gray on the exterior, and full of black points. These nails fell off at the end of four months and were succeeded by others. There were also horny laminae on the knees and shoulders and elbows which bore a resemblance to nails, or rather talons. They were sensitive only at the point of insertion into the skin. Various other parts of the body, particularly the backs of the hands, presented these horny productions. One of them was four inches in length. This horny growth appeared after small-pox. Ash, in the Philosophical Transactions, records a somewhat similar case in a girl of twelve.
Anomalies of the Teeth.--Pliny, Colombus, van Swieten, Haller, Marcellus Donatus, Baudelocque, Soemmering, and Gardien all cite instances in which children have come into the world with several teeth already erupted. Haller has collected 19 cases of children born with teeth. Polydorus Virgilus describes an infant who was born with six teeth. Some celebrated men are supposed to have been born with teeth; Louis XIV was accredited with having two teeth at birth. Bigot, a physician and philosopher of the sixteenth century; Boyd, the poet; Valerian, Richard III, as well as some of the ancient Greeks and Romans, were reputed to have had this anomaly. The significance of the natal eruption of teeth is not always that of vigor, as many of the subjects succumb early in life. There were two cases typical of fetal dentition shown before the Academie de Medecine de Paris. One of the subjects had two middle incisors in the lower jaw and the other had one tooth well through. Levison saw a female born with two central incisors in the lower jaw.
