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Another fact which has occurred to my own observation, and which I find likewise recorded in the Medical Repository of New-York, and is mentioned also by Dr. William Barton of Philadelphia, demonstrates that the involution and woolly nature of the hair of the African negro depends, in a great degree, if not chiefly, on the quality of its nutriment in the skin. Henry Moss, a negro in the state of Maryland, began, upwards of twenty years ago to undergo a change in the colour of his skin, from a deep black, to a clear and healthy white.  The change commenced about the abdomen, and gradually extended over different parts of the body, till, at the end of seven years, the period at which I saw him, the white had already overspread the greater portion of his skin.  It had nothing of the appearance of a sickly or albino hue, as if it had been the effect of disease.  He was a vigorous and active man; and had never suffered any disease either at the commence-,

[[footnote]]ignorant travellers who have visited this country; at another, rejecting, with obstinate scepticism, the most certain facts.  But who can forbear smiling, when, instead of the cause which is here assigned for the involution of the hair of the tropical Africans, they are pleased to ascribe it to the tortuosity of the pores in a black skin, and the struggle of the hair to push its way through them?[[/footnote]]

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ment, or during the progress of the change. The white complexion did not advance by regularly spreading from a single center over the whole surface. But soon after it made its first appearance on the abdomen, it began to shew itself on various parts of the body, nearly at the same time, whence it gradually encroached in different directions on the original colour till, at length, the black was left only here and there in spots of various sizes, and shapes. These spots were largest and most frequent, where the body, from the nakedness of the parts or the raggedness of his clothing, was most exposed to the rays of the sun. This extraordinary change did not proceed by gradually and equably diluting the intensity of the shades of the black colour over the whole person at once; but the original black, reduced to spots, when I saw it, by the encroachments of the white, resembled dark clouds insensibly melting away at their edges. The back of his hands, and his face retained a larger proportion of the black than other parts of his body; of these, however, the greater portion was changed. And the white colour had extended itself to a considerable distance under the hair. Wherever this took place, the woolly

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