Thanks to Robert Forrest for Hemingway's sweating waiter and to
Julian Barth for his comment on chromhidrosis (you learn
something every day). Lipofuscin pigments can be demonstrated in
a variety of tissues and conditions - so why do they find their way
into the sweat only in certain patients ? I note that Jirka (Lancet
1968, i, 1429) says that his patients showed discolouration of the
axillary sweat (apocrine sweat glands) but simultaneously
produced colourless sweat from the scapular and lumbar regions
(eccrine sweat glands). That must explain why it's the colourless
variety that seems to find its way into the lab !
Nick Miller,
London
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