Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/278

This page needs to be proofread.

authority among our English cousins. He says, "Shaving the scalp is beneficial. Nine out of ten affirm that this does harm. I know to the contrary."

We have a friend, a surgeon in the navy, who is one of the nine. He was on duty in the East India squadron, and for some cause, he could not imagine what, his hair commenced falling out. He thereupon shaved his head, and what was his annoyance to find that the hairs never would grow again! You may be sure he does not indorse Dr. Tilbury Fox.

Men keep their hair closely cropped, and have done so as a rule ever since history commenced. Yet it is matter of daily observation that their hair is weaker than woman's, more apt to fall out, and more subject to disease. This has been explained by all sorts of theories. Some have blamed "stove-pipe hats," some the custom of more completely covering the head and thus shutting out the air, others attribute it to the greater activity of the brain in man (absurd people!), others claim the difference is owing to the greater pains women take with their hair, and others accuse cutting the locks as the cause of their downfall. But it is likely that all are wrong, and that it is one of the physiological peculiarities of the male sex, to have weaker, as we have already stated that it is to have finer hair (that is, of less diameter). The apostle Paul, who, though no physiologist by profession, was a man of consummate ability, and educated in all the