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.
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