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Care of the Hair
The scalp should be thoroughly brushed every day with a brush stiff enough to reach the skin, so the dandruff may be removed. Have nothing to do with nostrums to force the hair to grow, or to remove the hair. Cleanliness is the best hair tonic; depilatories are dangerous. If your hair is thin, use false hair as little as possible. There is no more certain cause of baldness than constantly wearing masses of false hair. Dyeing the hair, also, to produce some fashionable shade, is injurious in the extreme. All hair-dyes are poisonous, and the constant growth of hair at the roots requires a constant renewal of the dye. As a rule, nature has given hair that harmonizes with the complexion and eyes. Add all the helps to nature you please, but do not attempt to interfere too decidedly with it. If a woman is unfortunate enough to have a beard, or rather, if she considers this a misfortune, depilatories will not remove it. Nothing but the patient use of the tweezers will eradicate a beard-often, even this will not succeed perfectly. X. Garments Next the Skin.
As a rule, woolen should be worn next the skin, where the object is quickly to pass off the perspiration. It is the best summer shirt, and the coolest, for workingmen, but it need not be as thick as a board. Cotton increases the warmth and perspiration, and has the property of retaining discharged humors, and passing them back into the system. Wool promotes perspiration, but by its gentle friction keeps the skin healthy, without clogging the pores. Linen gives a sense of coolness, but a fictitious one; it soon becomes damp. It holds the perspired matter, and the air striking the moist surface, chills the body. The action of flannel is to excite perspiration, quite necessary to the person at work, but it passes it through the material to the outside, where it is dissipated freely. Thin soft flannel for summer, and thicker flannel for winter, should therefore be the rule.
XI. The Care of Clothes.
NEVER brush clothes when wet. They should first become perfectly dry. Then lay the material flat, and brush thoroughly the right way of the cloth. Before brushing, rub out spots of mud. Remove all hard grease with the nail or the point of a knife, then cover the place with some absorbent paper (a piece of a blotter), and run a hot iron over it; change the paper, and repeat the operation until all the grease is absorbed. If the grease has soaked in, soft soap or ox-gall, or both, should be employed to remove it. Cloth suits that have become somewhat threadbare, are restored by second-hand clothes dealers, in the following manner: The cloth is first soaked in cold water for an hour or more. It is then laid flat on a board and rubbed the way of the cloth with a teasel-brush or partly worn hatter's card. The clothes are then hung up to dry, the nap properly laid with a hard brush and dressed smooth with a hot iron.
XII. The Care of Brushes and Combs.
HAIR brushes and combs should be regularly cleaned. A solution of bicarbonate of potassia or carbonate of soda is good for cleaning brushes, and if they are rinsed in bay rum afterwards, so much. the better. If not, use pure soft water. Combs may be cleaned by washing in soft water and soap. A weak solution of carbonic acid, or of sulphate of soda, is also useful for cleaning brushes; but always thoroughly dry and air them after washing. The horrors concealed in a damp, dirty hair-brush can only be revealed by the microscope, but these minute germs are a virus from which scalp diseases originate and are disseminated. Hence never use the brushes and combs common to the guests of hotels and boarding-houses. The best tonic for the hair is frequent brushing with a dry brush, and without dressing for the hair. If anything is to be used as a dressing, take a little dilute bay rum, let the hair be handrubbed dry, and afterwards dry brushed. N NHC