Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/276

 Except in diseased conditions of the skin, there is no occasion for scratching it with a sharp-pointed comb, or a hard brush. Such irritation frequently leads to disease, and should be avoided. Combs are for arranging and cleansing the hair. They should be of several sizes, their teeth blunt, and entirely free from cracks, splinters, or broken points. If a single tooth is broken or split, the comb should be discarded. Buffalo horn, tortoise shell, ivory, vulcanized rubber, are all unobjectionable materials, though the latter is often inconvenient on account of the electricity it develops.

A coarse comb should first be used to loosen the hair from knots, and then a fine comb to cleanse it from dust or powder.

Several brushes are required to dress the hair properly. One should be soft and yielding, with which the scalp itself should be brushed. Another of firmer bristles is requisite to brush out the hair, and clean it more thoroughly than the comb. And a third should be devoted to applying any oil or similar application, which may be used. For this latter purpose, the ingenuity of perfumers has devised a special form of brush, with a hollow back in which the oil or lotion is poured, and by which it can be applied without greasing the hands or dripping on the clothing.

As the hairs have a natural direction in coming through the skin, it is well to brush and comb them always in this direction, and never against it, and still