Just Why You are Getting Bald.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 3 April 1914, Page 8

Just Why You are Getting Bald.

THE SCALP NEEDS BLOOD IRRIGATION, JUST AS A FIELD NEEDS WATER IRRIGATION. (By PROF. W. PEABODY BARTLETT.)

On many large plains you will find spots where the grass does not grow. Plant these places to grass, put ia irrigating canals and your barren spots will become covered with grass. As long as your irrigating canals work properly and a sufficient supply of water ' reaches the once barren spots, the grass will continue to grow. Now cut your supply of water in the canals and see what happens. The grass will cease growing, it will burn brow*n, and next season no more grass will grow, while the old grass will have been worn away, trodden down, blown off, and disappeared. The spot once green vith a luxiiriant grown of grass has become "bald." You have a good head of hair. This is because the blood supply at the roots of the hair is plentiful, wear continually a tight hat that the tiny arteries and does £>t allow the blood to reach the hair roots, and wherever this happens the hair will begin to come but. Unless this is promptly relieved, no more hair will grow. Again, your advancing age may be responsible for an impoverished condition of the blood, and for a hardening of those very minute arteries in the scalp. The same result follows, baldness. Your head needs irrigating about the roots as j the barren prairie needs irrigating about the grass roots. It has been said that there are germs that cause baldness. This microbe of baldness has been discovered, but along with this discovery has come another discovery to the effect that it isn't the microbes that cause baldness, but baldness that causes the microbe. This microbe is found on bald heads because it lives where hair cannot live. Yet this microbe is no more to be blamed for baldness than weeds growing rank on an abandoned farm are to be blamed for the poor condition of the land. "Roth baldness and hardening of the arteries result from the same cause. The scalp is nourished by means of blood irrigation from many groups of arteries. Each one of these carries the needed ! nourishment to a little group of j hair roots. If your hat or any ; head covering so comprises these j arteries that the blood cannot ! reach the hair roots, baldness be- j gins. The hair falls out only where it dies out. A healthy hair will not fall out. The first hair i to die out is that at the ends of , these irrigating arteries. This is quite natural, since the blood reaches these ends of arteries last. As these terminal spots are over the > temples and on the back of the j hear), baldness naturally first begins : in those places. j Our scalps are really advance guards of our systems, and the first i to give warning of impoverished blood circulation. Since hair was put upon our heads for the pro- I tection of our scalp, it is wrong j to crop it or fshave it or even put | strong washing solutions in the

ftair that lu'.c away liie oily suo- ; stances that furnish the life of the hair itself. All this will help to bring baldness. If you keep utuhair so thoroughly scrubbed with alkaline substances as to keep the oil washed out, your baldness will come on much more quickly. Cold water is not natural, and has a tendency to do harm to the hair and the whole system if too frequently applied. Sick people should never have their hair shaved from their heads if it is a possible thing to avoid it. because a convalescent needs the protection of the scalp. If your hair is beginning to fall out, your chief care should be to increase ,the blood supply; do not bind the scalp with stiff hats. Take exorcise and get in the open air and 1 consult a reliable physician as to the best means of improving the quantity and quality of your blood, j This will stave off baldness to a remarkable degree. When your brush and comb bring out quantities of hair, it is because the hair ite dead and ready to fall out. Hair that falls out naturally will be replaced with strong hair, otherwise the hair that comes out will not be replaced at all, or else weaker hair will take its place, which will soon die and fall out, and no more will grow there. Baldness and grey hair are quite different matters. The normal co- | lour of your hair depends upon the I colouring of pigments deposited in 1 the channels that supply the nourishment. Man's hair will whiten where the skin is irritated, subjectjed to pressure or kept wet, aside ; from turning white through the adj vancing years, when the supply of co- : louring matter is lessened or en- j tirely cut off. Oily fluids are a natural nouri'sh--1 ment for the hair. It has been said that ordinary vaseline is one of the best hair growers known. Some people have even massaged the scalp with beef marrow with good ref suits. That oil is the natural food of the hair is shown in the manner in which the hair bathes in the oily fluid held in the terminal cup of the sebaceous jglaiids before it springs j forth from the collide. This bath, j which each hair undergoes before it : springs forth, strengthens the pigments, tones the colour and renders the hair fit to cope with the destructive action of atmospheric heat and cold.