St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-28
CURIOSITIES OF HAIR.
History, Poetry and Romance of the
Subject.
Allusions to Bearded Women-Stories About
Long Beards-Ancient Superstitions,

time when the young Adonis spies the first
furze on his upper lip or the modern belle
loads her head with bangs, waves, curls, wigs,
scallops, coils, scratches the question OF hair
on the head, ON the lip, chin. or cheek, and
how to wear it or not to wear it, has been
momentous one. 1t has been question
which has annoyed the church. Kings and
emperors have made it the subject OF spec
ial orders and issued edicts regarding It,
Some nations have venerated, others, cursed
and despised, the hair and beard. To-day
the hair and beard business furnishes en-
plovrnent to thousands of men and women,
and no toilet of either sex is al fat until it
has received consideration and care. The
beard is invariably the color of the eyebrows.
Its preservation is sanctioned by physicians,
for it wards off bronchial troubles and throa
diseases, while mustaches and whiskers pre-
vent nervous affections of the face
The ancients thought the hair was kind
of excrement and formed no part OF
living body. They said that it was gener-
ated in the fuliginous parts of the blood, in
hailed by the heat of the body to the surface
and then condensed in bassing through the
hair, being cut, will grow again, even in old
age, when vitality is low; that in consump-
tive people, whose body and forces are con-
tinually wasting away, the hair thrives.
Sometimes even it grows upon carcasses and
corpses They said the hair does not grow
by Juice circulating within it, but, like the
rails, by juxtaposition. The modern theory
is that every hair properly and truly lives and
receives nutriment to feed it like other parts.
Each hair is divisible into TWO portions, the
root and the free extremity. The root is peor
shaped, a tFife larger below than at the sur
face Of the skin, and the tissue is softer than
the exposed portion of the body. AT the
deepest portion of the hair follicile, or cavity
in which the hair rests is the hair papilla.
This is situated deep in the tissues
at the bottom of each follicle, and pro-
jects into small cavity at the lower end of
the hair. The little hair papilla which is
only one-ffteenth Of line, or 1-1SOth OF an
inch long, is of vital Importance to the vital
ity OF the hair as from it are derived the ma
terias of its growth, there being in its inter
ior a minute blood vessel. 1t is generally be-
lieved that the reproduction of the hair after
it is lost from any cause takes place from
this papilla On the other hand as long as
this papilla is in tact and in healthy condi-
D"AANS
propriety, however, the growth of hair is OF
a different kind from that of the rest of the
body and is not Immediately derived there
from or reciprocated herewith. Perhaps it
is in the nature of vegetation. 1t grows as
plants grow and derives its food from some
juices of the body, but not from the nutri-
tious juices of the body.
HAIR ON CoRPsEs.
Tr 4ba ,obiIooopbioa1 no1lantiOOc of MulfpruS
there is an account of a woman buried at
Nuremberg, whose grave, being opened
forty-three years after her death, hair was
found issuing through the clefts OF the coffin.
When the cover was removed the whole
shape of the coffin was visible, but was COW
cred from the crown of the head to the sole
of the foot with thick set hair, long and
curled. The sexton was about to handle the
upper part of the head when the whole fell
apart at once, and nothing remained but
handful of hair. There was neither skull
nor any other bone left, yet the hair was sol
id and strong Mr.. Arnold relates the case
of a man who was hanged on the gallows for
petty theft, as was formerly the custom in
England, whose body was covered with grow
ing hair before it was cut down from the
gallows.
Hair does not confine itself to appearances
on the head and face or other external parts
of the body. There are some wonderful in
stances of hair being found on the internal
surface of the body. Pliny, the naturalist,
declares that Aristomenes had hairs in his
heart, and Arnatus Susitanus gives an ac-
count of man who had hairs on his tongue.
Hairs have been found in the breasts of
women, and were thought to have caused
the distemper known as trichiasis, yet some
authors think they are small worms, and not
hairs. That hairs have been found in the
kidneys and were voded by the natural dis
charge is an indisputable fact The learned
Hippocrates the father of the healing art,
was of the opinion that the gandular parts
were most subject to hair, yet bundles of
hair have been found in the muscular parts
of beef and in parts of the human body
equally firm. Assesses sometimes contain
hair Shultetus opened the abdomen of
human body, and found twelve pints of
water and lock Of hair floating around
loose. Cordan found hair in the blood of
Spaniard, and Slonatius in that of lady of
Cracovia
Hair on the face is not confined to men
alone. There have been severalwell anthem
ticated historical instances of bearded wom-
en-, beside the astounding curiosity that tray
els with the side show, and whose sex is
somewhat dubious In the cabinet of Slut
gardt, Germany, there hangs portrait of
young woman, Hartel Graetge, whose chin is
covered with large beard. She was drawn
in 1887, when she was nearly twenty-five
years of age. In another gallery there is
another portrait of her taken at a more adj
vanced age, but also with beard Charles
XII, of Sweden, had woman whom he
captured at the battle of Pultowa, in 1924,
and carried with him to the Carnival of Ven
ice. Her beard was yard and half long,
and she was presented to the Gar Marga-
ret the Governess of the Netherlands, had
long and stiff beard, and the Lombard wom-
en- who went to the wars wore boards. Some
disbeGever observes they made themselves
boards with the hair of their heads, which
they ingeniously arranged on the sides of
their cheeks. In Bath there is picture of
Barbara Vanbeck, wife of Michael born at
Augsburg Underneath the picture is writ
ten: ''This woman I saw at Radcliffe High
way in the year 1868, and was satisfied she
was woman. JOHN BULFINCH."
The face and hands of this woman are rep
resented as hairy all over. Her aspect re-
sembles that of a monkey. She has long
and shining beard, the hair of which hangs
lose and flowing, like the hair of beard.
She is represented as playing an organ, and
Vanbeck is said to have married this fright
full creation for the sake of carrying her
around as show. Antiquity, which is new
er behind hand in producing montrosities,
has many instances of bearded women
Whenever public calamity threatened the
Redacenses, people living above Halicarn-
assus, the chin of the priestess budded with
bristling hairs. Hippocrates speaks of two
bearded women. Phaetesa, the wife of Py-
thisii of Abdera, and Harnysia, the wife of
Gorgippos. Bulwer, the traveller, says that
there is a mountain in Ethiopia, near the
Red Sea, where women dwell with ''prolix