Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1899 — A Black Turning White. [ARTICLE]

A Black Turning White.

Two years ago an Austrian merchant, who had been on a business trip to Africa,brought back with him from Egypt Ibual Lacho, a Soudanese negro, aged nineteen years. Speedily acclimated, the black immigrant soon learned the German dialect of the Viennese and surprised them by his clever manners and the elegant dress he displayed in the cases and upon the “promenade.” During the last autumn he became affected by nervous troubles, which a famous neuropathist of Vienna subjected to electrical treatment. Ibual Lacho’s condition began to Improve from day to day, and, strange to relate, in the same proportion as the disease seemed to leave him there disappeared the black dye of his skin. Paler and paler he grew, until, through the stages of Peruvian and Egyptian mummy coloration and the pallid tinge of embalmed beef, he blanched into gaining the true Caucasian complexion. ' Ibual’s doctor explains the discoloration of his patient from a process by which the black pigment In his skin was disintegrated and finally eliminated through electricity. This chief coloring matter, melanin, of pigmentum nigrum, found In the eye, the hair and the skin, contains iron, and strongly reacts upon electric application.—Vienna Fremdenblatt. •