THE CAUSE OF BALDNESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9307, 9 March 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE CAUSE OF BALDNESS.

The cause of baldness, although long and diligently searched for, yet remains undiscovered. The theories to account for the oss of hair have been many and various. Mr. Eaton, in the Popular Science Monthly, attributed it to the wearing of tightlyfitting hair coverings, living within doors, and keeping the hair closely cropped. He thinks, also, that this condition is exaggerated by the influence of heredity, and says that there is no reason why bald heads should not yield to the laws of heredity as much as curly or red heads. M. Gouinlock, in the same magazine, attributes baldness to the high hat and the hard felt, hat, both of which constrict the bloodvessels which nourish the hair-bulbs. Dr. T. Wesley Mills, Professor of Physiology at M'Gill University, thinks that'both of these views indicate the direction in which the truth lies, but that neither gets at it wholly. The degree to which such peculiarities as baldness are inherited is one of the most disputed matters. The great increase in the prevalence of all forms of nervous disease, and the modifications wrought in old forms of disease by tho greater prominence of the nervous type of human being, points to the fact that our civilisation makes calls upon the organisation 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 disappointments 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 bo 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 women is specially marked. That overwork of the brain may influence the cephalic circulation (and so the hair) unfavourably, ie evident 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 i 3. not surprising that the vortex 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 reabage. •