Hair and Some of its Clinical Significances

FIRST of all, Ladies aid (ientlemCn, I wishl to thank you and to say 10ow veIy proud I feel of the honour you have conferred uponl mlle by electing me as your President, the more so as, similar to my immediate predecessor, I too am occupying the chair of my father, but with shortcomings of which I am only too conscious, especially wheni 1 think of those who have precedled me (luring the long history of the Society and its parent, which started nearly a century and a half ago as the Belfast Medical Society in 1806. Mly add3ress to vou tonight has been rather a thorn inl mY flesh, somewhat like Androcles andl the Lion revcrsed, so you will appreciate the feeling of relief I will experience if youo, Lions, prove good Samaritans during the process of removal of the thorn The subject I have clhosenl is onc itn which everyone at some time or other, is more or less interested, or shall I say concerned about, its absence or presence an(l distribution, and I hope that some of my observations may be not without interest to you. I have oftenl Nondered if the forty-seven scholars of King James' time perhaps could n1ot as truly have substituted for the lleart the hair-the hair is deceitful who cani klnow it-for indeed, as Mr. Pickwick said of another word, "it comprises in itsell a clifficult study of no iniconsiderable magnitude," an1d this eveniing I will touch, as it were, only the fringe of what has been poetically called "woman s crowning glory"-an appellation which, in view,x, of their successful invasions inito so many spheres undreamed of bv their grandmothers, one rather hesitates so to (lesignate, and also lest thus earlx in mN' year of office, I he coisi(lere(I archaic and a mere Lau(dator lep1l.Por(a (acti. Certainly I could be remin(ded that altimost synchronous with winning the vote, woman in general begani to shear her hair, perhaps an incongruous proceeding, bearing in mind that in ancient Rome shorn heads were the badge of slaves, and someone has remarked 133 MC29=