Untitled

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 674, 19 April 1869, Page 4

Poisonous Haib-dye.—The frequent impunity with which leaden and other metalliferous hair-dyes are used, when only applied at intervals, has led to the introduction of a still more dangerous clas9, palled hair-restorers, in which a slower action of lead is employed to blacken the hair hy daily applications. The most romantically named hair-dyes and restorers are just so many solutions of lead, mercury, silver, or copper, combined with mordants or decomposing agents. Those of nitrate of silver destroy the hair, but do not injure the health. Mr Erasmus Wil« son tells us that one of the most largely used hair-restorers contains as much as a drachm of acetate of lead to half a pint; it is sold for more guineas than it is worth pence in point of money value. Leaden combs, used daily, produce also insidious forms of lead-poisoning. Schott publishes, in the Gazette Medicate de Paris (1864), an instructive post-mortem examination of a fatal case. Those who have used some of those poisonous preparations with impunity for a number of years should yet remember the fate of Mademoiselle Mars, who also dyed her hair, in the hope of eternal youth, and succumbed in one night, under cerebral disturbance produced by a new application. The pearl-white powders which are becoming more and more fashionable for giving the complexion the dull Parisian whiteness of skin —the teinf mat —are equally dangerous, and prpduce numerous poisonings, especially amongst dramatis artists. There are many innocuous powders whiph answer the purpose $ but carbonate of lead adheres so much better, that it is still the favourite, as it was when Ovid denounced it in his Ars Amoris, and Martial in his Epigrams.— JJritish Medical Journal.

Mosquito Bites.—A correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald writes:—" As the pubject of a cure for bites from snakes and noxious insects is now repairing atten* tion in your columns, a cure for mosquito bites may prove acceptable. Take common parbonate of soda, with water, make into a paste, and spread oyer the batten spot, when dry all irritation will have gone, and any swelling usually subsided. The above was communicated to a London paper, and the extract forwarded me here by a friend. I reproduce it, and at the same time fully endorse it for the benefit of your readers, It's r\ot a preventive, (is there any simple available one?) but it is A'Pemect