Dandruff is a perfectly normal product. It represents scales of the horny layer of the scarf-skin, both those pushed out of the follicles by the growing hair, and those fallen from the surface of the scalp of the head. The scales of the horny layer of the scarf-skin are constantly falling from all parts of the body, but the fact does not attract general observation, as it does on the scalp, because their fall is not arrested as it is by the presence of long hairs like those of the scalp. In healthy persons, especially in the cases of those whose hair grows fast, the formation of dandruff is naturally the most rapid. Beyond the natural, healthy condition described, we reach the oily scaliness of seborrhoea and other diseases. Fuller mention of affections of the skin causing baldness properly belongs to a chapter in which we shall discuss the diseases and parasitic invasions of the hair; so we reserve it for that place.

THE

CHAPTER XXV.

THE COSMETIC CARE AND TREATMENT OF THE HAIR.

HE hair, at the first glance, seems to be virtually independent of the body, to be a growth which manifests vigor or weakness, irrespective of vigor or weakness of bodily constitution. We sometimes see young, lusty members of society bald at an early age, and the consumptive often endowed with marvelous luxuriance of hair. Yet this independence is, after all, but seeming. We know next to nothing of the delicate processes of vital chemistry, but, little as we know, we know this, that the growth of hair depends primarily upon nerve-supply and circulation in the scalp, and therefore that a man endowed with superb general health may become bald, while, at least for a time, the hair of the consumptive may flourish. The health of the hair of the consumptive, as deduced from its appearance of luxuriance, is only seeming. Consumption is a consuming of tissues and coincident death of structures. In its earliest stages it often presents many signs similar to those of health,high hope, appetite, color, muscularity,-because the vital action is spendthrift. The outgo is more than the income; it is not drawing upon the interest of constitution, for there is none, but upon the little principal that it possesses. But later, the hair shares in the general decadence. It begins to fall out, what is left to become dry and shriveled, and in the last stages of the disease, if they last long enough, the sparse remainder gives no idea of its pristine luxuriance and beauty. The nerves of the scalp and all the apparatus depending on them are atrophying and, like the body, will soon be dead.

The first, last, single, fundamental fact that we would strive to impress upon the reader, regarding the growth of the hair, is (305)

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that, however much it may vary in the individual on account of constitution, sex, age, or climate, it depends in all persons upon the character of individual hair-producing nervous and vascular organization of the scalp. Whatever, therefore, whether in kind or duration of covering for the head, in cleanliness of the part, friction to it, stimulating lotions, contributes to keeping the scalp in a healthy condition, promotes also the growth and duration of the hair.

The scalp should not be regarded as skin, otherwise than at least as susceptible as that of the body, liable from the same causes to experience good or ill effects; for it has the same constitution as that of the rest of the body, with the relative disadvantage of not being heavily re-inforced by tissues below. Coincidently, another fact should be kept in mind, that general rules apply only to mankind in general, that often what is permissible to one person is impossible to another. The amount of neglect which, in the shock head-of-hair of an Italian organgrinder's boy, gifted through race, and spending most of his time in the open air, has no apparent effect, would mar or ruin the hair of a home-abiding woman. With him every nerve in the scalp is in vigorous action, every gland secreting, despite neglect of cleanliness. He is living almost in a state of nature, the woman almost as far as possible from it. Who has never observed, who has been away on a ramble on sea-shore or mountain, how much faster there than elsewhere the hair grows from the effects of air and exercise under the open sky!

It follows that certain practices of some persons, in the care and treatment of the hair, are impossible to others. People generally forget that they are not living in a state of nature, but, on the contrary, in a highly artificial one, and, therefore, that what, in a state of nature, nature would tolerate as divergent, it is ruthless with regard to in departure from or violation of its laws. To a certain degree it will accommodate itself to the special

needs of every individual, but beyond that the bond between it and the individual becomes strained, and often parts with life itself. Everywhere human beings need light and air and cleanliness for health and life itself, but they seem to forget, if they ever knew, that the hair, being a vital structure, needs, like the body elsewhere, light, air, and cleanliness. It especially needs attention to them in the midst of the artificial life of civilization, for, in a state of nature, the hair obtains the first two so plenteously that it can even afford to dispense largely with the last. With regard to light and air, we have, however, made some advance in practice, as the flowing locks of girls up to fourteen years of age show. We much fear, however, that the practice originates with fashion, and not from recognition of the fact that we have mentioned.

Civilization is especially mindful of the need of cleanliness for the hair, while apparently oblivious of its demand for air and light. But, while practicing the cleanliness to which it is largely addicted, it often pursues methods which are detrimental, and sometimes fatal, to its chief end in view. We can favorably influence the condition of the hair-secreting apparatus only by means of maintaining or increasing the healthy action of the scalp. By nourishing and stimulating to reaction the secreting structures, they are kept in healthy condition, and their productive energy increased. We shall attempt to show that some of the practices contemplating these results are, instead of being beneficial, highly pernicious.

One of the most flagrantly wrong methods is severe combing with the fine-tooth comb, and severe brushing with the stiffbristled hair-brush. The epidermis and corium of the scalp are not, as are the epidermis and corium of the body, supported by large masses of subcutaneous connective-tissue and fasciæ. The thickness of the scalp is very slight, so thin that in some cases of baldness it presents the appearance of dry parchment