during the night, going away at eleven in
the forenoon. The age of this subject was forty-
seven, whereas that of the ladies ranged from
sixteen to thirty-two. The very precise statements
that have been put forth respecting the
existence of this disease have excited great
incredulity and provoked the strongest denials of
the fact. The duty of the committee was to
obtain complete information respecting the
subject in dispute.

It had nothing to do with the interpretation
of a fact whose existence is clearly
demonstrated; nor had it to inquire what interest
such and such persons could have or not
have in their eyelids being usually stained with
black, nor to pronounce an opinion respecting
the morality of those persons. In science, those
arguments are absolutely devoid of value. The
numerous examples to be observed every day
in the hospitals, and even in the world, edify
medical men touching the hankering after
importance and effect, which often leads to the
strangest simulations and the most gratuitous
frauds, and which also sometimes end in
betraying interested motives unknown and even
unsuspected at the outset. The committee's
task was simply to ascertain the reality or the
falsity of a fact; but the investigation of this
simple material fact was not without its
difficulty.

At half-past three in the afternoon of the
29th of June, 1861, the committee paid a
visit to Madame Z., who had been sent from
Brest by M. de Méricourt, as offering an
authentic case of chromidrosis. The meeting
took place by appointment, the day before, at the
house of M. Henri Roger, secretary-general to
the society. On the first occasion of the lady's
presenting herself, there was a very decided
coloration of both the lower eyelids, which, at
her second appearance, was considerably darker;
a circumstance explained by herself and her
husband as occasioned by the receipt of a letter
which had greatly agitated her nervous system.
It was stated that no washing or wiping of any
kind had been applied to the eyes since their
departure from Brest.

Madame Z. is twenty-three, of a nervous
temperament, with chesnut hair, light hazel
eyes, and eyebrows darker than her hair. Up
to the time of her marriage, she enjoyed excellent
and regular health, with the exception of
frequent but incomplete fainting-fits. Her
appetite was good, and even hearty. After supper,
she often felt oppression of the chest, with
redness of the face. The first discoloration of
the eyelids appeared before the birth of a child,
still living, after which, it disappeared, to return
and remain more or less permanently. The
development of the black stain, she said, is
always accompanied by weakness of sight and
increased general susceptibility. Lively
emotions develop the phenomenon more rapidly;
and, during the periods of its existence, if the
coloration is effaced, it takes to reproduce it
a space of time varying from one to four hours,
sometimes less and rarely more. According to
the statement of Madame Z. and her husband,
nothing can be more irregular than the interval
between these returns of the blackness, or than
the circumstances which tend to induce them.
Madame Z. confessed that, to keep the skin of
her face in good condition, she habitually made
use of a composition called Anti-ephelic Milk,
or Water.

At the moment of examination, the lower
eyelids were the seat of a very intensely black
coloration, slightly granular in its appearance
at several spots, and with a dull instead of a
shining surface, giving anything but the idea of
a liquid or an oily stratum. The colour was
still darker close to the lower eyelashes, as well
as in the furrow which separates the lower eyelid
from the cheek. Here, however, the colouring
abruptly ceased, although by a narrow very
gradual shading off. This singular regularity of
form accorded ill with the idea of a secretion—
a function which is generally less mathematically
circumscribed. At the outer and inner corners
of the eyes, as well as on the lashes of the upper
lids, there were little lumps of colouring matter,
which seemed to result from the union of smaller
grains collected and grouped together, either
spontaneously or in consequence of opening and
shutting the eyelids—movements which were
repeated by the lady both very frequently and
very forcibly.

On examining these surfaces with a lens
magnifying four or five diameters, they were found
to be covered with a black stratum, the grains
composing which were not imbedded in the
substance of the skin, as if they were issuing from
glandular orifices, but were placed and deposited
on the surface, to which they adhered with
considerable firmness. The down of the skin was
in no way stained by the black matter, which
was found to stick as firmly to linen as it did to
the skin.

The committee next endeavoured to remove
the whole of the colouring matter found upon
the lower left eyelid, both for the purpose of
studying its nature, and to observe whether, and
how (if at all) the black coloration was
spontaneously reproduced. As water, according to
Madame Z., removed the stain with difficulty,
a brush dipped in glycerine was passed over the
lower eyelid; and by means of a slight scraping
performed with a small gold ear-pick, the colouring
matter was collected on a slip of glass in
sufficient quantity for future examination. The
rest was taken away, as completely as possible,
with the help of a fine linen rag. To refresh
Madame Z., a little fatigued with these operations,
the eyelid was carefully washed with cold
water, after which it presented an extremely
natural and healthy hue, without even a shade
of the brownish tinge which is observed on the
lower eyelids of certain persons.

The black matter, submitted to the microscope,
presented an amorphous, granular, fragmentary,
opaque appearance, of a black hue, without any
appreciable blue reflexions, and without any
seizable trace of organisation. M. Gubler, after
a profound microscopical and chemical investigation,