FALLACIES

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20104, 6 December 1930, Page 16

FALLACIES

XVI. THAT, HAIR CAN GROW, >r»/W IN A NIGHT; 1

(SPECIALLY WIUTTBK lOK. THI PBBSS.') E% DR. R. R. D. Mellkjai™] (

So universal is this belief that novelists and romancers find it necessary to whiten the hair of their victims in order to convince their readers that the hero really did suffer indescribable agony. Quite recently I was assured by a very earnest eye-witness that he knew a young man who was accidentally locked in an office safe overnight "and next morning when we let him out his hair was white." Recently, too, we had a cable telling us that Mr Scullin's bair had suffered a similar blanching, but whether his illness or the financial depression was the major cause was left in some doubt. There are two questions: (a) What is the cause of hair colour J and (b) What conditions favour blanching? The microscope shows that normal adult hair colour is mainly due to the presence of darkish pigment granules (melanin) in the hair cells beneath the surface layer. The same pigment is found in the skin, and in both situations, the more the granules, the darker the colour, giving all the shades from blond to coppery and negro. White hair differs, imthat, not only has it no pigment, but in addition it has many spaces filled with air which by causing a total refraction of light give the appearance of whiteness. In human old age these air sacs aTe the result of a deficient or new type of nutrition in the growing root. Albino rats, rabbits, etc., have the same airfilled hairs, together with the absence of pigment. For whitening to occur suddenly it is therefore necessary to have a sudden admission of hair into the shaft. But the part of the hair which projects above the surface is not alive; its cells £re hard, horny, and dead; and there is no means by which their structure can be altered, since they have no living contact with the rest of the organism. Pain cannot reach them, nor are they sensitive to direct cutting, singeing, and so on. To a hair, no emotional experience could be ccpial in intensity to its actual burning, and yet this does not produce whitening! The problem is now narrowed down to considering whether illnesses or emotional causes could so alter the structure of the invisible hair root that after a period new growth actual white hair would replace the old. On the face of it, this appears likely enough, yet, in fact, if blanching occurs at all (and reliable evidence is lacking), it must be a rare phenomenon, since most severe illnesses and accidents fail to produce any such change. If the

hair is affected by aw - f . fall out or become structure. But this is »yj * thing from whitening. The main condition f or of course, old age; but therein individual differences, many are transmitted as family The fact that so and so and early wintering since there is no means of ll ' when his hair would have s?"* without the grief. The War gigantic experiment in grief-production, yet dematofe specialists recorded no &««** hair whitening either ed soldiers or the c ivi£ lation. Prisons, courts, i * Ms offer oppUJi, observation of the theory i, J* i yet the evidence from'these 2!?; fails to confirm the assertion, of? of all this, physiologists, nJ? Pavlov and Cannon, have intend studied the effects of emotional J in dogs and cats, but no hair wliw has been recorded. The universal acceptance offe lacy is probably due to the <W mental linking of grief and wHte fo with old age, and since the .old u necessarily endured many sorrows has given rise to the further that the whiteness was j_, griefs. (With most of ns, it jj t!w whiteness that causes the griet) X, doubt, too, a person -who an intense emotional eiperiaw ;i observed by others with acuity; and this is the time to seetfc. hairs which previously escaped oknt tion. If the popular theory were aeS; one would expect coursing uses, j® and small beast stalkers, and sows have observed many instances in ta&j animals, since htqjan beings oi hardly differ in such a fannm** point from the other if the quarry should soddeaij bee® invisible by blanching, the kits would be no more surprised than & scientist who at last succeeds in» serving with his own eyes vht apparently every one dse tm rae; see at will.

To sum up:— (1) Grief sad pain cannot pit more than. & mall par. i blanching. (2) Overnight Handling is «t acceptable in gdente.

(3) If quick blanching «eni will become viable oelt rip. the old hair 1 is iwaMd the new growth tpjsnMT the surface. , d