Have you seen a lady that is the color Blue?

In the 60's a lady in her middle 30's came to the beauty shop each week. She'd recieved treatment for a medical condition that caused her skin to be blue. It wasn't bluish, or sort of blue, it was Blue! She had blond hair which made her look unreal. Has anyone ever seen anything like this and what caused it?

Have you seen a lady that is the color Blue?

I have seen this before in an elderly woman from England. In the 1940's through the early 1960's there was a solution that was used for nasal congestion. It was a compound that had "silver" in it. "Over use" of these nasal drops/sprays caused an absorption of the silver into the tissues which caused a bluish pigmentation to the skin as you describe.

She lived to be a ripe old age so it must not have been too toxic. This was during the time period that the local neighborhood pharmacist compounded many over the counter remedies.

Many things are readily absorbed through the mucus membranes and gain access into the blood stream to be send throughout the body. The skin can reflect many conditions or diseases. Skin is one of the largest organs of the body. The skin got pigmented permanently...it was an accumulative effect that did not dissipate. Somehow this silver solution probably constricted the swollen nasal passages. There was probably a "rebound effect" that would cause the person to keep using it over and over to keep the nasal airway open at the cost of becoming permanent blue-gray color. I think the condition is called Argyria or Argyrosis if you want to comb the medical journals for some actual pictures of it.

I wonder if "smurfs" had high silver content in their wells?

Have you seen a lady that is the color Blue?

I'm guessing, believe it or not, that you met one of my relatives. The "Blue People of Kentucky" lack an enzyme, diaphorase, that converts methemoglobin back to hemoglobin. Since methemoglobin has a bluish tint, they eventually start to appear blue because the substance builds up. It's a simple recessive trait; if a child has two copies of it, like most recessives, he/she will have the trait. The "Blue Fugates" in Kentucky are distant relatives to me through a family into which they married (Combs), and that's why I know about them, as I do genealogy as a hobby. The condition can be treated using (of all the strange things) methylene blue, a common laboratory dye!

I used to have a pedigree chart for this family, and I know it's online SOMEWHERE; short of that, here are some sites below that have more detail about that family. I'd be curious to know where you were located at the time you met the lady you mention! :-)