Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/312

 Whenever there seems a tendency to any disease of the kind we have described, it is well to use in washing the head—which should be done twice a week—a soap medicated with juniper tar or carbolic acid. These soaps can be obtained from most apothecaries. It is not well to comb or brush violently the hair, when there is such an inflammatory condition present. First let the disease be cured, and the skin resume its healthy action, before it is stimulated. For the same reason it is a serious blunder which many commit, to apply at once hair tonics or pomades containing stimulating substances to their scalps already in a state of irritation. On the contrary, cooling lotions or soothing ointments are required until the irritation is removed, and then the circulation and innervation of the parts should be encouraged, if they require it. Frequently, without any such means being called in, the hair, as soon as freed from the disease, against which it has been battling, will at once commence to grow thick and strong.

EXCESSIVE GROWTH OF HAIR, AND DEPILATORIES.

There is such a thing as having too much hair, as well as too little, and the tendency is particularly destructive to beauty, when it displays itself on uncovered portions of the body, where hair ought not to grow. Not unfrequently the front hair encroaches on the forehead, injuring its outlines and imprinting a coarse