If the tattooing is superficial (merely
underneath the cuticle) the marks may possibly be removed by acetic
acid or cantharides, or even by picking out the colouring-matter with a
fine needle. With regard to scars and their permanence, it will be
remembered that scars occasioned by actual loss of substance, or by
wounds healed by granulation, never disappear. The scars of leech-bites,
lancet-wounds, or cupping instruments, may disappear after a lapse of
time. It is difficult, if not impossible, to give any certain or
positive opinion as to the age of a scar; recent scars are pink in
colour; old scars are white and glistening. The cicatrix resulting from
a wound depends upon its situation. Of incised wounds an elliptical
cicatrix is typical, linear being chiefly found between the fingers and
toes. By way of disguise the hair may be dyed black with lead acetate or
nitrate of silver; detected by allowing the hair to grow, or by steeping
some of it in dilute nitric acid, and testing with iodide of potassium
for lead, and hydrochloric acid for silver. The hair may be bleached
with chlorine or peroxide of hydrogen, detected by letting the hair grow
and by its unnatural feeling and the irregularity of the bleaching.
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