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In his poem "Die Füsse im Feuer" Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-1898) describes in detail the phenomenon of sudden graying of the hair. The protagonist is a Huguenot nobleman who hosts the man who has tortured to death his wife some years ago without killing him despite ample opportunities. Sudden whitening of the hair has been used as literary stylistic means with the aim to demonstrate extreme psychological stress to the world, without confirmation of its occurrence in each case.

The first reported episode of rapid whitening of the hair is recorded in the Talmud. This intriguing phenomenon is explained on the basis of a two-step process. The first step involves the actual abrupt development of white hair due to vitiligo or alopecia areata. The second step involves the apparent sudden whitening of the scalp hair due to either simultaneous lengthening of the white hair or selective loss of the dark hair. In fact, the hair that is perceived as suddenly whitening was already white.