The retention and the loss of the hair from a physiological standpoint / by T. Wesley Mills.

  • T. Wesley Mills
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The retention and the loss of the hair from a physiological standpoint / by T. Wesley Mills. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    writers in Popular Science claim, it does not suffice to explain the subject at all adequately. The great increase in the prevalence of all forms of nervous disease, and the modifications wrought in old forms of disease by the greater prominence of the nervous type of human being, points to the fact that our civilization makes calls upon the organiza- tion which tell especially on the nervous system. The strain of life falls in general, it will be conceded, most upon men. Man is the bread-winner; his anxieties, struggles, and dis- appointments, are both many and severe; and man is often prematurely bald for the same reason that he is prematurely old in other respects. Woman is less so because brain stress less frequently falls to her lot. But in connection with this must be taken, to complete the explanation, the fact that as with some races and some males of our own race, the vitality and persistence of the hair of the head in woman is special- ly marked. That overwork of the brain may influence the cephalic circulation (and so the hair) unfavorably, is evi- dent enough from the dark circles beneath the eyes, owing to venous congestion, on the morning after unduly severe mental exercise, not to mention the headache from a similar cause; and it is not surprising that the vertex of the head, with its relatively variable and feeble blood supply, should suffer most—in a word, that the overworked or overworried man should be bald—unless, as in most women, there is unusual vitality of his hair bulbs. Baldness is one more of the many warnings of our day—one of Nature's protests against the irregular and excessive activity maintained in this restless age.
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