A WHITE MAN TURNING BLACK

Westport Times, Volume VII, Issue 1058, 28 March 1873, Page 4

A WHITE MAN TURNING BLACK

A San Francisco paper tells the following :—A gentleman about 25 years ot'age, ruddy complexion and curly red hair, who had an intractable and painful ulcer on the left arm, resisting all previous modes of treatment, yielding to the request of trying the effect of transplanting a.piece of skin to the ulcer from another person. The ulcer was prepared in the usual manner by his physician, and a bit of skin about an inch square was taken from the arm of a line healthy negro man and immediately spread over the ugly ulcer, and then carefully dressed and baudaged. The skin transplantation had the desired effect. Healthy granulation sprung up, and the unsightly ulcer soon healed. A few months alterwards ho went to the physician and told him that ever since the sore healed the black skin commenced to spread, and it was increasing. About onethird of his arm was completely negroeil. The doctor himself is alarmed. The high probability is that the whole skin of this white man will become negro. This is a new thing under the sun. It would be rather difficult to explain the physiological process which takes place to brinf about such a skin change as this. The problem is, how can the coloring matter of tbo skin be so radically, changed? and how is this pigrcent change propagated ? It is certain that the law of capillary attraction plays no insignificant part in the spreading process. Grafting pears on an apple tree has communicated to the apples a pear taste.