The American Naturalist

THE CHIGNON FUNGUS.

BY TILBURY FOX, M. D.

NOTHING could more clearly have shown the amount of ignorance of the natural history of minute life abroad amongst the public, and the little trouble people will take to make the most trivial use of their common sense, when a novelty, embellished by plausible description, is presented to them, than the rampant nonsense which has been penned and believed in regard to the so-called gregarinæ infesting certain varieties of false hair. The "chignon controversy" has been one of the most widespread, but at the same time transient sensations of the age: started abroad, it soon reached England, where it bewildered the fashion worshippers of the day. The immediate cause of this hubbub was the appearance in the Hamburg paper Der Freischütz, of the 7th of February, 1867, of an article based upon the account given in the "Archiv der Gerichtlich Medicin und Hygiene," and in which we are informed that "Mr. Lindemann professes to have discovered and observed a new microscopical parasite, to which he has given the name of Gregarine. He reports, according to his observations, that the gregarine -a protozoic animalcule-is of the lowest order of development of the animal organism, and is found parasitically within the animal and human body, where it floats about with the blood, by which it is nourished. The most striking instance of the parasitism of the gregarine is said to be its existence on the human hair. The gregarinous hair, however, differs in no way from the sound hair. Only if one looks very closely, little dark brown knots, which are generally at the free end of the hair,

may be distinguished even with the naked eye. These are gregarines. Out of thirty samples of hair procured from a hairdresser in Nishni Novgorod, gregarines were found in seventy-five per cent. And it is well known that the hair used for the chignons of the better half of Russia is bought of the poor peasant women, who are proverbially of dirty habits. Pursuing his inquiry, Mr. Lindemann has discovered that almost every louse has in its interior an enormous number of gregarines, and he convinced himself by further experiments that the gregarines on the human hair are deposited there by lice. He observes that the most favorable conditions for the growth of gregarinæ are light, increased temperature, and a moist atmosphere; and he declares that in the ballroom these are not without their influence on the parasites when they exist on false hair, for they at once revive, grow, and multiply, get disseminated in millions, and in consequence of the increased respiration produced by the exertion of dancing, are inhaled freely into the lungs, reach their specific gregarine nature, and after a while induce disease in the body."

In these quotations prevalent fashions were depicted as sources of danger, inducing discomfort and disease. A writer in one of the daily papers ("Investigator") asserted that he had witnessed from direct observation the development of gregarine into lice, an assumption that implies a liberty with Darwinism that its most zealous and radical devotees would at the present time hesitate to suggest. It is only just to say that the Lancet, which first noticed the matter, and confined itself to a mere mention of the facts, urged its readers to accept the statements put forth, with the gravest caution. Lindemann's assertions are very startling to scientific men, because

they are wholly in antagonism with observed facts. Whilst scientific research has as yet afforded little insight of the habits of the lower forms of animal and vegetable life, the revelations of the microscope within the last few years are pregnant with significance as regards their ubiquity, and teach us that we are not to be astonished if we find living forms in unexpected sites, undergoing the most manifold variations in aspect when brought under the play of different influences. At the same time we have the amplest experience to caution us against the acceptance of new species without the keenest criticism. What, then, is the truth in this matter? In my devotion to the subject of diseases of the skin, it has lain in my way during the last ten years to investigate the whole subject of diseases of the hair connected with the development of vegetable parasites, and I think no one has made a larger number of microscopic observations. I have never seen a true gregarina in connection with the hair; but I have recently found a vegetable growth on false German hair answering in naked eye appearances to that described by Lindemann as little dark specks surrounding the hair towards its end. Gregarinæ, according to Lindemann, are made up of cells, which he states to be vegetable, and it is possible that that which I have found may be identical with his gregarinæ. I cannot help thinking that many bodies totally dissimilar in nature have been classed with gregarinæ, which my friend Ray Lankester, than whom no higher authority on the point exists, declares to be truly animal. The growth I have found I now proceed to describe.

If you take a hair on which the parasite exists, and hold it between yourself and the light, towards the outer half you will see one or more, perhaps half a dozen, little dark

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