Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/272

 we have marked out on our forearm the area of one square inch, and carefully counted the hairs it contains. There are eighty-five in all, and this is more than authors say are usually found.

The growth of the hair in a healthy scalp is from eight to ten inches a year. Its rapidity is not the same at all times. A German writer who has given great attention to this small matter (if, indeed, any of the operations of nature should be called small) has found that it grows faster in the daytime than at night, and in the summer than the winter. There is a common notion that the increase is also more marked in the first half of the lunar month, and there are not wanting men of science who have indorsed this belief. "Who does not know by his own experience," confidently says the Abbe Toaldo in his Saggio Meteorologico, "that the hair and nails grow faster after the new, than after the full moon?" To which question most physicians coolly reply that nobody knows it. As it is a matter of one's own experience, we recommend every one who is curious about it to observe for himself, and make up his own mind irrespective of the agreement of doctors.

Many persons are alarmed toward the close of summer and the commencement of autumn, to discover their hair coming out in unusual quantity. There is commonly no ground for anxiety. This is a natural and healthy occurrence, similar to the moulting of