Medicine: Hope for the Greying

Many a man has gone grey trying to find a cure for grey hair. Even vitamins such as pantothenic acid, which works fine on rats, have no effect on humans. But the search goes on. Last week Dr. James Hundley and Robert B. Ing of the National Institute of Health reported that they had found a new clue in their rat cages. Black rats which got a diet with plenty of pantothenic acid but not enough copper went grey within eight weeks; boosting the copper in their food started a fine crop of black hair growing again within five days.

Perhaps, speculated Dr. Hundley, people with impaired digestion or on restricted diets do not get enough copper into their systems. For such cases he would like to see careful medical testing of a diet containing copper-rich items like liver and seafood. But no one, however grey, should try taking his copper straight. In any but the smallest amounts, copper is a cumulative poison.