Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/311

 In old and obstinate cases, some internal medicine may be necessary, but often the above, or the use of the wash containing spirits of ammonia, given in the last section, will answer. The diet must be looked to. It should be plain, but sufficient, without coffee, liquors, or anything heating, and half a bottle or a bottle of citrate of magnesia should be taken once or twice a week according to circumstances. By these means, continued for some time after the red patches have disappeared, persons will rarely fail in curing themselves.

At other times, close inspection will show that the scales of dandriff proceed from minute vesicles which rise on the skin, break, and dry up. They are very apt to escape attention altogether, unless they are searched for. This is a condition of eczema, as it is called, and will be sure to be followed by the loss of the hair in time.

Or again, a common aspect of neglected hair is one presenting little patches on which a yellowish mass of scales are collected, not dry and branny, but oily, or hardened into crusts.

Both these conditions must be referred to the family physician, as they require too active medicines for home treatment.

This is also the case with those common complaints of children, "scalled head," and "ring-worm," both of which lead to destruction of the hair and baldness.