Sprinkle over 100 parts of good quick-lime about 50 parts of hot water, and, when slaked, triturate [shake up] with 200 parts of cold water. Place in a suitable flask, and pass into it the hydrogen sulphide, generated from 200 parts of sulphide of iron and 200 parts of sulphuric acid, gradually introduced into the generator. This preparation must be immediately placed in small vials and securely sealed; but even then it will lose its virtues after a few weeks. This was originally recommended by Beetger, but is sometimes known as Martin's Depilatory. This paste is to be spread over the hairy skin to the thickness of inch, and allowed to remain for ten minutes, when it is removed with a wet sponge. When allowed to remain too long, bad sores are apt to result.

Another, known by the Turkish name, Rusma, is composed of 50 parts of quick-lime, 30 parts of starch, and 5 parts of orpiment. This is to be made into a paste with water, and employed in the same manner as the foregoing.

Of course these, and all such methods, remove hairs only temporarily. One of the incidental and dreadful phases of abnormal hair is the tenacity of its growth. What might seriously affect a surface of healthy hair, does not seem to influence the obtrusive growth in the least. Our imaginations, however, are somewhat concerned in this impression, but only to the extent of exaggerating it to the mind, for abnormal growths have doubtless wonderful relative vigor. The only way of making complete and final disposition of abnormal hair, without marring the beauty of the skin, is by what is known as epilation by the electric needle. This is a very trifling operation, so far as hurt is concerned. A very fine platinum needle is inserted in the papilla of the hair, and then, a small galvanic current from the negative pole being turned on, the papilla is instantly destroyed, and the reproduction of hair from it, of course, rendered impossible.

The following recipes are for washes, regarded as excellent for stimulating the scalp in case of gradual loss of hair :

Mix, and rub once a week over the scalp in a single application.

One of the best of hair-tonics is Pinaud's Eau de Quinine. In a later chapter we will give a list of some of the more elegant preparations for the toilette.

Oxygen, as is well known, is one of the constituents of water. But water may contain a much greater proportion of oxygen than is necessary for its constitution. Binoxide, or peroxide of hydrogen, contains a very much larger amount of oxygen than water in nature does. In this form it is sometimes called oxygenated water, and is a highly oxidizing fluid. This it is which, in the modern practice of bleaching the hair, has superseded the use of potash for the same purpose. The following formula for its preparation was, in April, 1884, given by the American Druggist :

The hairs should be digested with a 3-per-cent. solution of carbonate of ammonium, at 300 C. (860 Fah.) for twelve hours, then treated with soap-suds, and finally again digested with the solution of carbonate of ammonium. When thoroughly washed, they are placed in peroxide of hydrogen, which should previously be perfectly neutralized with ammonia.

"Digested" means, in this case, simply "soaked in." As one could not literally keep the hair in soak for twelve hours, what is meant is that the hair is kept saturated by wet cloths.

Peroxide of hydrogen produces in the hair an effect which is a travesty of any tint that nature makes in the hair of the blonde. It is a mystery how any one can imagine that it simulates even the lowest order of that kind of hair, which in its lowest natural estate is far from handsome, while it rises at its highest to a beauty not to be exceeded. The peroxide blond hair has a singularly dull, lifeless cast of yellow, so flagrantly unnatural, that a glance at it as it passes in the street is enough to detect it. The hair-substance has, by the use of potent chemicals upon it, ceased to be a living tissue, and is lustrelessly and obtrusively defunct and wiggy.

A

CHAPTER XXVI.

PARASITIC INVASIONS OF THE SCALP, HAIR, AND BODY.

NY cutaneous affection is necessarily aggravated by the presence of hair on the area involved. We can cite such a case, even when a large boil, occurring under the chin, amidst the thickest of the growth of a dense beard, was especially troublesome on account of its occupying that locality. There are, however, affections of the skin which are distinctively associated with localities where there is a growth of hair, and one affection, eczema, or tetter, to which there is marked liability as a consequence of some depraved condition of the hairproducing functions. When tinea or seborrhoea are the diseases concerned, they, although having a wider range than merely attacking the hair-producing apparatus, may be distinctively discases of the scalp and other hairy portions of the body.

Tinea sycosis, or barber's itch, is a vegetable parasitic affection, to which only members of the male sex are liable, because it attacks only the bearded parts of the face and neck. Tinea circinata, or ringworm of the body, caused by the same vegetable parasite, does not by predilection attack hairy surfaces. When it spreads to them from other parts that have been attacked, the affection is known as tinea tonsurans, or hairdenuding tinea, and the disease becomes modified in character.

Tinea favosa, crusted, or honey-comb ringworm, is derived from another vegetable parasite. It may be circumscribed to one locality, and may invade the whole body.

One form of tinea, alluded to in a preceding chapter, attacks the nails. The disease in its various forms is very contagious. Ringworm of the scalp sometimes runs through a large school from the contagion of a single pupil.

Seborrhoea capitis, or degeneration of the sebaceous apparatus of the scalp, results in an oily exudation poured out on the head and mixed with scales of scarf-skin, forming unsightly and disgusting crusts on the head. As seborrhoea is a disease of the sebaceous glands, it may occur on any part of the body, and in rare cases has involved the whole of it.

Eczema capitis, or eczema of the scalp, may be a primary or a secondary disease of the scalp. As already indicated, it may be brought about by irritation of the scalp from some other disease.

As a

With this brief mention of facts related to some diseases of the scalp, we must stop. It would be preposterous, even if it were right, for us to attempt to present even the briefest outline of such diseases and the treatment applicable to them. regular physician, we are opposed to the laity's attempting to treat themselves medically. We therefore conclude this branch of our subject by recommending that, for any cutaneous affection, recourse should be had to a good physician. Neglected diseases of the skin make firm lodgment. The skin acquires the habit of the disease, and through it the body becomes systemically affected. Frequently, the trouble is centred in the trophic system, and constitutional as well as local treatment for the affection is indicated, neither of which offices can any one but a physician rationally prescribe.

We will now pass from the consideration of vegetable to that of animal parasites.

It is a singular fact in the natural history of man, or rather of woman, that woman bears better the reality of a disagreeable thing than hearing mention of it. In our travels we have never met an exception to the rule, that the landlady who says that she never had a bed-bug in the house has plenty of them; nor of the converse rule, that if the landlady judges that it is within the bounds of possibility that she might have such a visitation

she is among the least likely of human beings to suffer from the pest. One kind of woman expects no special immunity that her equally worthy neighbors cannot enjoy; the other takes it for granted that all will go well of itself in this best of all possible worlds. One searches, and finds, if there be aught to find, and, finding or not finding, rests in blessed contentment that for some time to come nothing can be found. The other searches not, but lays the sweet unction to her soul that she is not as other women are, but lives under a special Providence. When we once saw a dame so well-assured, descanting on the natural immaculateness of her house, while all the time the very insect, witness for the plaintiff, was crawling, in plain sight to everybody else, along the edge of her spring-bonnet, we could heartily exclaim with Puck, "What fools these mortals be!" Weismann mentions, in one of the appendices to his work "On Heredity," by way of illustrating the tenacity of the life of bed-bugs, that "they can endure starvation for an astonishingly long period, and can survive the most intense cold. Leunis ("Zoologie," p. 659) mentions the case of a female which was shut up in a box and forgotten; after six months' starvation it was found, not only alive, but surrounded by a circle of lively young ones. Göze found bugs in the hangings of an old bed which had not been used for six years; 'they appeared like white paper.' I have myself observed a similar case, in which the starving animals were quite transparent."

Anywhere, at any time, however innocent we may be of neglect, we may have parasites brought to us abroad, or introduced into our very domiciles. Horrible to us as may be the thought, the horror of it can serve no good purpose but to put us on our guard and keep us ever on the alert to repel invasion. The contamination may be received in public indoorplaces, in hacks, in cars, or may enter our houses in freshlylaundried clothes. We knew a gentleman who, once taking a