Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/308

 A very effectual stimulant, and one we especially recommend on account of the ease and neatness with which ladies with long hair can have it applied, and the excellent effects it has, is electricity, or its modification, galvanism. A current of moderate force should be passed through the scalp for fifteen or twenty minutes daily. This excites the action of the blood-vessels, and restores the nervous force to the part. It may be regarded, when judiciously and regularly applied, as at once the most efficient and the neatest hair tonic known, where local debility is the trouble. Nor does its use interfere with the other means which we have suggested.

Finally, shaving the head may be resorted to. This, as we have previously said, is not approved by many, and there are no doubt numerous cases where it would be ill advised. Nor can it be expected to have marked results, unless other means are also employed. The shaving should be performed once a week for at least three months, in order to obtain its full effect, and in the meantime the scalp should be stimulated daily by electricity, the cold bath, frictions with strong liniments, or brushing. When all these are attended to, as well as the general health, there is a very good chance that one or the other will prove efficacious, and the hair be materially strengthened.

Even when baldness has actually appeared, the case is not always desperate. If the victim has patience,