Exceptional Whiteness in Tropical Man

Abstract

SINGULARLY enough, being encamped in the same place as that from which the paper on “The Blackness of Tropical Man” was written to NATURE some months ago, the converse, a case of the whiteness of this class of man, presented itself unexpectedly. While entering, to-day, the native village of Jeykondasholapurm, that had sunk to nothing from having been the capital of a native dynasty in the south of India, and situated about lat 11° N. and long. 78° E., the writer observed an apparently white woman sitting on a doorstep by the side of the road, with flaxen-coloured hair, but having in other respects the characteristics of natives attacked by leprosy. Making inquiries from one of the principal native revenue officials at the place, it was ascertained that there was a family living hardly a mile away, of which more than one of the members had been born, and continued, white all their lives. That this did not result from their being lepers, and that none of their neighbours were in the least afraid of them, though opinion was not quite clear as to the whiteness not being disease.