Evening star., 1900-12-25
ABOUT HUMAN HAIR
Some Interesting Facts That Are Not
Generally known.

Some Interesting Facts That Are Not
Generally known.
From Ainslee's Magazine.
1t is a popular notion, sedulously fostered
by the BARRIERS who get an extra fee for
sirgefng, that the hair is a tube and that
when 1t is cut off 1t bleeds and the natural
vitality of 1t dribbles out into the atmos-
phere. l think people have often been
shown the hollowness of hairs when they
have looked at them through microscope.
If you can overcome your conviction that
all this world affords is hollow and unSub-
stantial and are able to understand that
most people looking through a microscope
can see exactly what they are told they will
see. you will be pleased to hear that the
human hair is a solid bundle Of epithelial
cells, the inner ones being rather more
loosely packed like pith. Gray hairs have
air bubbles in their outer layers. Blond
hair is the finest and most thickly set.
Black hair is less so, and red hair is the
coarsest and most sparsely planted The
human hair Is not perfect cylinder and
the f1atter it Is the more natural curl 1t has,
and, being affected by dampness, the more
1t kinks up. The hair grows six seven
inches in a year, but the reason why a
woman's hair is not five feet longer today
than it was ten years ago is that each per-
son seems to have a definite normal length
beyond which the hair refuses to grow even
II you put on the very best lotion you
thinks it is about long enough it drops out
and you find it stuck fast on the soap dish
or the stationary washbowl, wrigging with
delight at your efforts to pick it off with
your wet fingers.
1t does not discourage hair to be plucked
out by the roots, as ladies who have a ten
dency to grow muStacheS will bear me out.
1t simply gets angry and comes in again
CoarSer than ever. That Is because what
keeps the hair going is something that can
not very well be got at from the surface Of
the skin. 1t is a little Dapilla, 1-1S0 Of an
inch long, away down at the bottom of the
hair tube. Nothing that can be dabbed on
the skin can get down there either to harm
or help it. The only way to remove such
hair is to make UP your mind to spend
money and to have unpleasant time. Go
to a physician and let him kill the growth
of each hair with an electric needle. l hope
you will enjoy yourself. 1t is like tattooing
in its sensations. There have been some
ladies that have removed muStacheS from
their ips-I mean their own mustaches-by
taking needle and heating 1t in the flame
o. lamp and thrusting it into each indi-
vidual hair gland and so killing the papil-
lac. They get it red hot, you know, and
they also get tiny particles Of lamp black
on the needle, and it leaves a delicate tat
tooing effect that is very striking. I don't
know why it is that 1 want to laugh about
this, because you know it is not a bit funny
to the girl to have her lip hurt so and then
find out that in taking away the mustache
that she might have shaved off every day
she has LETT an artlnClal muStdCne tnat
nothing can remove. 1t is really serious
matter, but 1 always want to laugh, just
the same.
In some diseases of the scalp, such as
favus. it Is necessary to pluck out the hairs
in order to get at the skin, and 1t is on rec
ord that one little girl had to nave 10000
of them pulled out by the roots before she
got well. AS there are only about 10000
in the whole scalp. and this was only one
little patch. it is easy to see that plucking
out the hair does not mean the ultimate ex-
tinction Of hair on that spot.
Beard appears to grow at the same rate,
and to follow the same rules Of personal
conduct as the hair Of the head. SO If
man began shaving when he was sixteen,
and lives to be seventy years old. he will
have cut more than little bit off the top.
If he could keep in position all he has
thrown away. a head Of hair thirty-five
feet long and beard twentyseven feet long,
ali in one bunch would enable him to travel
with a circus summers and sit In store
window to advertise a hair restorer in the
winter. 1 don't know but he could get into
the United States Senate, although I hear
that they don't run SO much to whiskers
there now as they did while ago.