Sharp County record., 1880-06-17
THE HAIR:

Its Growth, Strength and CoIOr-Peculiar
characteristics of People with Different
COIOred Hair, Etc.
THE Detroit Free Press publishes the
following extract from a book on "The
Hair, its Growth, Care and treatment" ]"
recently published by a medical man in
that city:
The people of Paris and London alone
use twenty car loads of other people, S
hair. Converts usually furnish large
amounts for the French, Spanish and
Italian markets, and it is known to the
trade as "church hair The prices Of
hair range from five dollars to twenty
cents q head, though the finest of golden
hair will bring two dollars an ounce,
white hair five dollars an ounce. In
such cases head of hair is worth from
twenty-five to fifty dollars. Some ma
tionalities have apeculiar odor in their
hair; the Chinese hair has a musky
smell, and the odor of violets has been
detected in one or two instances. The
dealers detect the quality mainl ly by the
touch, can tell whether its color is dyed
or bleached, and whether it comes from
the living or the dead. As rule hair
growers are a degraded race whose
riches consist not in their hocks, but in
their own feeces, which they never pin
up or comb, but wear in closel y-ftting
caps.
The enormous strength of the hair is
hardly appreciable. A healthy single
hair will support four ounces. A single
head of hair in an audience OF 200 peo-
pie will support the entire audience;
and the hair of all the people in Detroit
would support load which would re-
quire 5000 locomotives to draw, and
the hairs of the people of the globe
would support a planet against the
gravity of the earth. Samsons hair
was evidently fitting emblem of his
strength.
The shape of the hair, looked at as
one would look at the end of stick of
candy, is an oval in the European and
light haired races, and in the Semitic
races more or less angular. The hair
of the negro is elliptical or kidney
shaped; it has no central canal, and
will "felt." The Europeans will not;
but, although the negro's hair as a
whole, seems coarse, perhaps on ac-
count of its curliness, a competent OBJ
server AYERS that the individual hairs
of this race are finer than the hairs of
the European. The curl in the negro s
hair is caused by effect, during thou
sands of years, of hot sun, which has
acted upon it like perpetual crimping-
iron.
Notwithstanding the smallness Of a
single hair, the hair on the heads of the
people of Detroit would make q foot
walk y inches wide and 600 miles in
length. In spite of the contrary
opinion, the hair of men is finer than
that of women, whether the cOarsest
male hair is compared with the coar5est
female hair, or the finest male hair
with the finest female hair; the finest
hair being found among civilized Ma
tions. The young woman with long,
fine golden locks runs her comb
through 70 miles of hair in the morn
ing; and some even have 80 and 100
miles of it. 1t is literally true that the
hairs of the head are numbered and, on
an average, amount of 100000 to each
person having a full and luXuriant
growth, black-haired persons having
the fewest, faXen-haired the most
"Whilst our blondes are 50 rich in
their wealth of golden tresses, their
darker-haired sisters are compelled to
be satisfied with fifty, forty--yes, and
some red-haired sisters with but thirty
six-miles of this covering, which st.
Paul says is glory to her. While the
first has the more from which to tie true
love-knots, Nature has allowed the
darker-haired ones to tie theirs the
stronger" But the filaments on ami
mails are much more numerous than on
man. On the MerinO sheep there is a
combined length of flament equal to
the distance railroad car, at the rate
of a mile a minute, would traverse,
night anu day, i'll 1906 years.
Hairs do not, as a rule, penetrate the
scalp perpendicularly, but at an angle.
When the angle of the different hairs is
the same, it is possible to give to it the
easy sweeps and curves which we gen
orally see it take; but if they are by
some freak of nature misplaced, "we
have the rebellious 'frizzle-tOps' that
are not susceptible to the influence of