Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/304

 FALLING OF THE HAIR, AND BALDNESS.

Hitherto we have spoken of the hair in health. We shall now review its most common diseases, and give their home treatment.

The scalp is subject to most of the affections which attack other portions of the skin, and also to some which are peculiar to itself. Some of them are unusually obstinate, and most of them are less easily treated on account of the covering of hair and the feeble circulation on the top of the head.

More common than any single one of these diseases is a gradual falling or thinning of the hair, without visible cause. It occurs usually between the ages of twenty and thirty, and in women more frequently than in men. Sometimes it commences during pregnancy, or in the late summer. The hair is reproduced very slowly, and has a dry, withered look, the partings become more and more visible, and finally there is an unmistakable tendency to a bald spot on the crown.

Such a state of things causes well-founded alarm, and one "hair-restorer" after another, mentioned in the newspapers and on bill-posters, is tried, and tried in vain. The young lady becomes distressed at the prospect of baldness, and is ready to take advantage of any means that will restore the glossy locks of yore. Let us see what we can do to assist her.

This thinning of the hair arises from some definite