I might also add that I believe many beardless faces and bald heads in middle and advancing age are often due to constant cutting and shaving in early life.  The young girls and boys seen daily upon our streets with their closely cropped heads, and the young men with their clean-shaven faces, are, year by year, by this fashion, having their hair-forming apparatus overstrained.

I also must condemn the modern practice of curling and crimping, the use of bandoline, powders, and all varieties of gum solutions, sharp hair-pins, long-pointed metal ornaments and hair combs, the wearing of chignons, false plaits, curls, and frizzes, as the latter are liable to cause headaches and tend to congestion.  Likewise I protest against the use of castor-oil and the various mixtures extolled as the best hair-tonics, restoratives, vegetable hair-dyes, or depilatories, as they are highly injurious instead of beneficial, the majority of hair-dyes being largely composed of lead salts.  But, should your patients wish to hide their gray hairs, probably the best hair-dye that can be used safely is pyrogallic acid or walnut juice, the hairs being first washed with an alkaline solution to get rid of the grease.  Nitrate of silver is also a good and safe hair-dye, but its application should be done by one experienced in its use.  The judicious use of these hair-dyes will give the hair above the surface of the skin a brownish-black appearance, the intensity of the color of which depends upon the strength of the solution.  But hair-dyeing for premature grayness should be avoided, as the diseased condition may be averted by the proper remedies.  Never permit the hair to be bleached for the purpose of obtaining the fashionable golden hue, as the arsenical solution generally used is highly dangerous; but, if your patients must have their hair of a golden color, insist upon their hairdresser using the peroxide of hydrogen, which is less dangerous than the preparation first mentioned.

Perhaps one of the most pernicious compounds used for the hair at the present day is that which is sold in the shops as a depilatory.  It is usually a mixture of quicklime and arsenic, and is wrongly used and recommended at this time by many physicians to remove hairy moles and an excessive growth of hair upon ladies’ faces.  Its application excites inflammation of the skin; and, while it removes the hair from the surface for a time, it often leaves a scar, or makes the part rough, congested, and deformed.

In the meantime, the hair will grow after a short period stronger, coarser, and changed in color, which will even more disfigure the person’s countenance.  With the present scientific knowledge of the application of electrolysis, hairs can be removed from the face of ladies or children, or in any improper situation, in the most harmless manner without using such obnoxious and injurious compounds as depilatories.

In conclusion, let me add that, if the hair becomes altered in texture, or falls out gradually or suddenly, or changes in color, a disease of the hair, either locally or generally, has set in, and the hair, and perhaps the constitution, now needs, as in any other disease, the constant care of the physician.