A treatise on the human hair, and its diseases / by Bela C. Perry.

  • Perry, Bela C.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the human hair, and its diseases / by Bela C. Perry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    146/204
    that, at other times, they are distributed singly over the scalp. When they exist in the clustered form, they have somewhat the appearance of a piece of honeycomb embedded in the hair. The disease obeys the law of extension, namely, exhausting itself in the part first attacked and extending its circum- ference, carrying devastation as it goes, and destroy- ing the hair completely. If it remain unchecked, it will destroy the whole of the hair on the scalp, and give rise to a deep-seated disease, with enlargement of the glands of the neck. Bitchet says, it is not the least curious part of the history of this complaint, that when the yellow paste of the crusts is examined with the microscope, it is found to be composed of numberless cells, connected together in such a way as to suggest the idea of a vegetable formation of the lowest type. Many of the cells are so arranged as to give the idea of stems from which branches pass off; and at the ends of the branches are smaller bodies, that have the character of seeds. Thus the plant is complete, and the Ger- man discoverers of this peculiar structure, conceived that the mode of propagating the disease by conta- gion, was simply the conveyance of the seeds from head to head, and that, finding an appropriate and propitious soil, they at once struck root, and began their existence as independent organisms. We have thus presented to us the curious proposition of a dis-