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.
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