Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/297

 *ral cases have come within our own knowledge within the last year or two, where lead palsy, lead colic, and fatal poisoning, were caused by the use of just such hair-dyes. Very recently a physician of Davenport, Iowa, who for four years had employed a lead dye for his hair and beard, perished with all the symptoms of lead poison. A chemical examination proved that the metal had been absorbed by the skin, and was present in his internal organs.

Some persons, it must be remembered, are extremely susceptible to the influence of the metal. They cannot employ such a hair-wash for a month without feeling bad effects. Others again may use it for years with impunity. The latter have no right to offer their experience as proof that such a mixture is harmless. A much wider experience than they can possess proves that it is perilous. We can at this present moment point to a lady hopelessly paralyzed by lead absorbed from a hair dye. The extensive and indiscriminate use of these mixtures deservedly meets with reprobation from physicians, while at the same time their harmlessness in many cases is conceded.

Of late years the ancient fashion has revived, which sets store by light hair beyond all other. The exact hue desired approaches that of a silver alloy of gold, or still more precisely, that of clean, well-cured, bright, wheaten straw. From the most remote ages, this hue, no doubt because of its similarity to that of the most