ABSTRACT
In 1812, George Sachs submitted a medical dissertation in the German university town of Erlangen that described his own remarkable condition. Sachs was an albino. His hair and skin were of purest white, as were those of his youngest sister. He had been born in Saint Ruprecht, a small and lonely village in a mountainous area, and was the oldest of ®ve children. He was a religious and modest man with a high educational level. At this point in time, albinism had mainly been documented in Africa, where a white-skinned baby born to black parents would be treated as a monster, and barred from breeding. During the slave trade, these black albinos were sometimes acquired as curiosities to serve in the mansions and palaces of Europe. The great showman, Phineas Barnum, would later include albinos in his travelling circus. Our colorful albino, George Sachs, was `discovered' by Dr Julius Schlegel in August 1795 at the age of nine. We know little of their relationship but Schlegel and Sachs would go on to become colleagues and, indeed, one of Schlegel's motivations for advancing Sachs was to prove that an albino can have a normal intellect, and could even practice as a doctor. Albinism is now understood in terms of genetic mutations in the proteins that make skin pigmentation and there is no logical reason why this would affect intellect. However, the story in this book is not concerned with the outward manifestations of color such as the color of our skin or hair. It concerns how some people color their
mental worlds. Indeed, George Sachs was remarkable for another reason.
