Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 81. (Budapest 1989)

Pap, I. ; Józsa, L.: A rare hair developmental abnormality (pili multigemini) and lousiness on hair remains from Medieval grave

Material and method A. The circumstance of finding of the hair remains - In 1985 archeologist G. ILON was carrying out rescue excavations in the court-yard of the Calvinist Church of Pápa - Kéttornyúlak (MRT 4. 38/1. site). On the southern side of the nave, in segment „E" he found several skull fragments. There was an incomplete calotte among them with hair remains on the right side of its occipital bone. The headdress fragment also found date the burial for the 16-17th centuries. By the bone and tooth findings the skeletal material belonged to a 15 ± 2 years old girl. Pathological lesions can be seen neither on the bones nor on the teeth. The anthropological material is deposited in the Department of Anthropology of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. B. Morphological examinations - We analysed the hair remains adjacent to the skull and consisting of approximately 1,500-2,000 single hairs. The hair was examined first in situ by stereomicroscope. In this face we selected single hairs for more detailed analysis. The prepared hair enbedded in Canada balsam was investigated by light and polarization microscope. Some other hairs were washed in distilled water and dried, and after decatising them with gold we examined them with a Tesla BS 300 scanning electron microscope. The unprepared (not dyed, not curled) hair of a woman of similar age was utilized as control. RESULTS OF MORPHOLOGICAL EXAMINATIONS According to the FISCHER-SALLER hair colour scale the hair remains are brown (S). The hair sample consisted of 8-10 cm long singles of hair. The diameter of hairs varied in a very wide range (0,1-1.2 mm). This latter, extremely thick hair was very rare. The majority of hairs was 0.1 -0.3 mm thick (Plate I: 1-2), which corresponds to the medium thick - thick hair size of the anthropological literature (DEÁK 1954). The cuticle layer was well preserved, the cortical and medullary substance was markedly separated (Plate I: 3-5). The different structure of the cells in different layers could clearly be seen with polarization microscope, and it was the same as in the recent control. Discontinuous melanin granules could be seen in the medullary substance (Plate I: 5). A proportion of the hair contained lesions, too. We found splitting up, fragmentation and longitudinal fissure of cuticle in several cases. In some cases this process went so far that the melanin particles were falling out freely because of the departure of cuticle and cortex. The roofing tile-like cell layer of cuticle was compressed, at some places missing therefore the hair analysed presented smooth surface in the scanning electron microscopic picture (Plate II: 6-7). Some singles of hair showed the signs of nodulous fragmentation, trichorrhexis nodosa (Plate III: 8-9), but this phenomenon was not general. Egg-shaped, tightly fitting, unwashable objects of 1-3 mm diameter could be found on some singles of hair. The periphery of these was semi-transparent, the center was dark and some kind of lobed structure could be seen. Compared to the microscopic picture of recent nit, similar structure was found, though no louse-goub could be recognized, within the nit (Plate III: 10-12). 4-5 singles of hair turned up with 1.0-2.0 mm thickness in the stereomicroscopic survey. These unusually thick hairs were separately analysed. In the microscopic picture 8-10 singles could be identified located partly in a parallel position and partly bound to each other. These singles of hair sometimes separated and sometimes they were closely bound together. It was possible to separate the cortical and medullary substance on these matted singles, however, they were unfit for polarization microscopic analysis. This phenomenon answered the description of pili multigemini (Plates III-IV: 13-16).