HEALTH NOTES

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3178, 14 May 1932, Page 7

HEALTH NOTES

5 SKIN AND SCALP. (By “ Hygiea.”) ’ There is something particularly beautiful about the blossoming of the ■ human form that occurs with adolescence. From the beautiful babe, the robust school boy or school girl, and ; the gangling hobbledehoy, we arrive, > at about 13 years of age, at the adolescent, who will continue for the next ; ten years to improve in beauty and ! intelligence up to whatever stage of : perfection his natural endowment will i permit. The childishness of the gang stage and the school-girl clique passes ! with the assumption of new dignities and the acquirement of a new self- ; interest. The boy enters awkwardly into his fii’st long trousei’s; he emerges in triumph from the hoarse piping that makes his breaking voice a matter of horrible embarrassment to him. The girl begins to examine her mirror with even more impassioned entreaty. In both there is an assimilation to the adult type. The limbs lengthen; the carriage acquires dignity, or, at any rate, a conscious assumption of poise; secondary sex characters develop; and there is a rounding out into charming contours of bony joints and prominences. INCREASED GLAND ACTIVITY. It is quite obvious that the adolescent has entered upon a new and important stage in his physiological development. In a sense, there is tremendous bustle and activity in the workshop of the body, which is adapting itself to new wants and new capacities, and, with the exaggerations of all normal processes, Nature, as it were, applies a hand-glass to latent defects. In the great majority of school children, even in their tender years, one can observe some infection ofi the skin of the face, some dandruff in the hair,, or some greasiness of the scalp. These matters largely pass unchecked in childhood, for they are obvious only after the mother has ceased to care in person for the intimate detail of face-wash-ing and so forth and before the boy or girl has been educated sufficiently to regard them as matters of serious moment. But with the sudden efflorescense that comes with puberty—the sudden increase in the activity of all the small oiling glands of the skin—each defect lifts a flaming head, crowned with yellow horror, in triumphant tragedy ! Crop after crop of pimples and blackheads mock the comeliness for which the adolescent studies the mirror yearningly and the chin of beauty and the coat collar of sprouting manliness are mocked and dusted with the tell-tale evidence of Nature’s horse-play. PIMPLES. If you study the distribution of black-heads and pimples they will be seen to be on all the upper surfaces of the face —and by that one does not mean necessarily the upper parts. - Every surface that looks upward—the upper part of the temples, the upward slopes of the cheeks, the top . lip, the upper curve of the chin —is a . faintly greasy ledge fit to catch and , hold falling infection, for the great - source of infection is the scalp. In- , fections of the scalp are almost universal in our highly-civiksed communities, and, because germs obey the ordinary laws of Nature, they find a , lodgment most easily on flat surfaces ] or ledges when they fall. Think for a moment of the bald area in the middle-aged man, and imagine where his germs would lodge if they sprang over the edge. From the back of the head they find no foothold in the ( undei'-cut curves of the occiput and . neck, unless they lodge against the collar of the male. From the ears . forward, however, they can find har- i bourage on all those upward-sloping ( ledges of the face recorded previous- ■ viously. When you realise that the , bald area in the man is that area , where the scalp germs grow in all of L us, we can understand why blackheads crowd the mountain slopes of the temples, the broad foothills of the cheeks, and the broken cliffs of nose, lip, and chin. We can readily apprehend, too, how the blocked pore, to expel the intruder, masses its army of white corpuscles behind it, and, by forming a pimple, thrusts it outward. Still more readily can we understand the frequency with which pimples, boils, and carbuncles arise on the back of the neck, rubbed into its tissues by the masculine collar. TREATMENT. Of course, prevention is the best cure. We all know it, but none of us ever thinks o 3 it until disease itself has planted its banners on our shores, and we stand in immediate peril. Let us, nevertheless, add one more warning to that disregarded multitude that pave the slopes of counsel. Mothers can be particularly helpful to children from 10 to 14 years, and can do a little to off-set that detachment between mother and daughter that. so often occurs at this age by binding their children to them with a bond of comlmon-sense gratitude—a gratitude based on skin beautification. The ■ care of the hair is based on regulai shampooing and hard scalp massage

with a suitable brush and the ideal suitability of the fingers. THE SNARE OF THE SHINGLE. Since hair was cut short, and requires very little time for brushing the scalp in women has lost much of that resistance that hard and frequent brushing formerly gave it, and dandruff, scalp disease, and baldness are increasingly comjmon among the female of the species—an unexpected invasion of yet another sphere of man's quondam pre-eminence ! A heavy head of hair required so much combing, hard brushing, and attention that that massage which is essential to its life was aflorded it as a matter of course. The present-day flapper who does her hair with a toss of her head, is laying up trouble in store for all but the wig-malcer. Five minutes’ earnest finger-massage of the scalp every morning and evening, a thorough brushing till the scalp tingles, and a shampoo once or twice a week, depending on the greasiness- of the hair), are the only necessities for the safeguarding of one of the most beautiful of feminine features and the first line of defence against unsightly skin infections of the face. A suitable shampoo is readily obtained from any chemist, and can be made even cheaper on many simple formulae. Having thus scotched the lion in his Hair—or, to be more accurate, the germ in th e lair—we can deal with those outpost scouts and predatory parties which affect the temples, face, and chin. The face should be steamed twic© a week,, and thoroughly washed with castile soap in water as hot as it can be borne ,rubbing the soap in very thoroughly with- the fingers. It is not enough to put it on the outside. The virtue of the washing must penetrate the whole thickness of the skin, and bring out into the light of day all those hidden combats getween the blood and the gedms that are going on in dark passages below the skin level. Following this thorough cleansing, dry the skin and apply a , lotion made up of 12 grains of precipitated sulphur to 1 ounce of calamline lotion. Paint this on at night, wash it off in the morning, and, to protect the skin from reddening unduly under this onslaught, use a goo*d face powder during the day. A man—who is handicapped in the matter of powder— can do much with the emolient preparations on the market for use after shaving. The care of the hair must be continual; the care Ov the face demands only a month’s exacting labour, and thereafter only occasional attention. The reward is beautiful skin.