'Gardener's Chronicle' 1849 page 205.) asserts that "pigs with little hair on their bodies are most liable to lose their tails, showing a weakness of the tegumental structure. It may be prevented by crossing with a more hairy breed."
In the previous cases deficient hair, and teeth deficient in number or size, are apparently connected. In the following cases abnormally redundant hair, and teeth either deficient or redundant, are likewise connected. Mr. Crawfurd (25/20. 'Embassy to the Court of Ava' volume 1 page 320.) saw at the Burmese Court a man, thirty years old, with his whole body, except the hands and feet, covered with straight silky hair, which on the shoulders and spine was five inches in length. At birth the ears alone were covered. He did not arrive at puberty, or shed his milk teeth, until twenty years old; and at this period he acquired five teeth in the upper jaw, namely, four incisors and one canine, and four incisor teeth in the lower jaw; all the teeth were small. This man had a daughter who was born with hair within her ears; and the hair soon extended over her body. When Captain Yule (25/21. 'Narrative of a Mission to the Court of Ava in 1855' page 94.) visited the Court, he found this girl grown up; and she presented a strange appearance with even her nose densely covered with soft hair. Like her father, she was furnished with incisor teeth alone. The King had with difficulty bribed a man to marry her, and of her two children, one, a boy fourteen months old, had hair growing out of his ears, with a beard and moustache. This strange peculiarity has, therefore, been inherited for three generations, with the molar teeth deficient in the grandfather and mother; whether these teeth would likewise fail in the infant could not then be told.
A parallel case of a man fifty-five years old, and of his son, with their faces covered with hair, has recently occurred in Russia. Dr. Alex. Brandt has sent me an account of this case, together with specimens of the extremely fine hair from the cheeks. The man is deficient in teeth, possessing only four incisors in the lower and two in the upper jaw. His son, about three years old, has no teeth except four lower incisors. The case, as Dr. Brandt remarks in his letter, no doubt is due to an arrest of development in the hair and teeth. We here see how independent of the ordinary conditions of existence such arrests must be, for the lives of a Russian peasant and of a native of Burmah are as different as possible. (25/22. I owe to the kindness of M. Chauman, of St. Petersburg, excellent photographs of this man and his son, both of whom have since been exhibited in Paris and London.)
Here is another and somewhat different case communicated to me by Mr. Wallace on the authority of Dr. Purland, a dentist: Julia Pastrana, a Spanish dancer, was a remarkably fine woman, but she had a thick masculine beard and a hairy forehead; she was photographed, and her stuffed skin was exhibited as a show; but what concerns us is, that she had in both the upper and lower jaw an irregular double set of teeth, one row being placed within the other, of which Dr. Purland took a cast. From the redundancy of teeth her mouth projected, and her face had a gorilla-like appearance. These cases and those of the hairless dogs forcibly call to mind the fact, that the two orders of mammals--namely, the Edentata and Cetacea--which are the most abnormal in their dermal covering, are likewise the most abnormal either by deficiency or redundancy of teeth.
The organs of sight and hearing are generally admitted to be homologous with one another and with various dermal appendages; hence these parts are liable to be abnormally affected in conjunction. Mr. White Cowper says "that in all cases of double microphthalmia brought under his notice he has at the same time met with defective development of the dental system." Certain forms of blindness seem to be associated with the colour of the hair; a man with black hair and a woman with light-coloured hair, both of sound constitution, married and had nine children, all of whom were born blind; of these children, five "with dark hair and brown iris were afflicted with amaurosis; the four others, with light-coloured hair and blue iris, had amaurosis and cataract conjoined." Several cases could be given, showing that some relation exists between various affections of the eyes and ears; thus Liebreich states that out of 241 deaf-mutes in Berlin, no less than fourteen suffered from the rare disease called pigmentary retinitis.