Health.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2076, 3 June 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

Health.

The Anatomy of the Hair—Then- imuch more in health of the hair than most people imagine. Simply speaking, on the one hand the hair cannot be in health, if the body be not so; and, on the other, an nn-h'-altliy scalp may positively produce grievioiis bodily ailments ; at least, I believe s'i; and 1 would adduce only one proof of this. Think you not, then, that if (he skin of the head be not wholesome, and every duct, whether sebaceous or perspiratory, acting well, headaches may occur, or a dull and hot feeling of the brain .’ Ton can conceive this to be true readily enough. Well, the brain acts, for good or for evil, constantly upon the stomach and organs of digestion, and upon these latter depends the whole economy of the system, ami the proper nutrition of hone, muscle, and nerve as well, Bemcmber when I say “hair” I do not mean only the visible poition of that appendage. but its roots ns well, ami the glan Is that lubricate the whole. It would take much more space than I have at my command at present to desc-ribo the anatomy and growth of the hair. I may however, state briefly a few facts concerning it:— Each hair, then, grows from the bottom of a minute sac or depression in the three layer? of the skin—a kind of bottle like cavity. Each hair is composed of three layers corresponding to those of the skin ; first an outer, made up of scales or cells, arranged like the tiles on a house, the free, ends being turned toward the point of the hair, so that the hair is, as all know, more easily smoothed one way than another. Secondly a middle layer, called the cortical portion, and this is the chief substance of the hair, ami it is this which splits in some ailments. Lastly and internally is the pith not present in aM hairs, though it probably ought to be. This pith consists simply of rows of large cells that line the cortical portion. The color of the hair depends upon a pigment which is found both solid and fluid in the cells, and the intensity of color, say of black or brown hair, depends upon the amount of thig pigment more than its actual color. The bottle-shaped depression from the bottom of which the hair grows is called the hair-sac, and its depth corresponds with tbc length of the hair which is to grow therefrom ; sometimes, therefore, the sac of a short hair will be only through the outer skin layer, while that of a loug hair will be quite deep. The axis of each sac is at an acute angle ; thus the hair is enabled to lie flat. If it were perpendicular, the hair would stand up. That it does so undergreat fear or excitement wo all know. This is produccd by a nervous tightening of the skin. It is constantly seen on the backs of dogs and cats when they are enraged. The hair grows from—is set onto, I might say—a little cone called the matrix and this cone is fed from the blood, and in its turn feeds the hair and enables it to grow. The natural gloss of the hair depends upon a secretion which is poured into the sac from two little glands called sebaceous, which secrete an oily juice. Washing the hair with bard alkaline soap entirely destroys this secretion and cannot but injure the hair. Sudden Changes of Climate— lf a blizzard of unusual severity wore coming from the south that would send the thermo meter down 50 degress or 70 degrees in three hours, we should expect a great increase of pneumonia and other respiratory diseases, resulting in deaths. Now, instead of three hours, suppose the mercury were to drop threescore degrees in three minutes—to take another step in fancy, and suppose this great change to take place in three seconds—what would likely be the effect on health? And yet we bring about, artificially, changes to ourselves quite as sudden and as severe as this. We make an artificial climate in our houses. We live indoors in an atmosphere heated by stoves, furnaces, or steam pipes, to 70 or 80 degrees; and we pass from our parlor or hall so heated into the open air. At a step, literally in a breath, the temperature of the air has, for us, dropped 50 degrees or 70 degrees. We may put on an extra coat or shawl and shield the outside of the body and chest, but we cannot shield the delicate linings and membranes of the air passages, the bronchial tubes, the lung cells. Naked, they receive the full force of the change—the last breath at 70 degrees, the next at freezing or zero—and all unprepared. Wc have boon sitting, perhaps tor hours, in a tropical atmosphere ; nay, worse, in an atmosphere deprived by hot surfaces of its ozone and natural refreshing and bracingqualitios. Our lungs are all relaxed, debilitated, unstrung ; ami in this condition the cold air strikes them perhaps GO degrees below what they are graduated to and prepared for. Is it strange if pneumonia and bronchitis arc at hand ! If wc arc in Batavia, and wish to come south, in winter, we try to make the change gradual. But in our house we keep up a tropical climate, or worse, for you have not the freshness of air that prevails in an open tropical atmosphere, and we stop at once into an atmosphere as much colder as (0 degrees difference of latitude will make it. It is in effect, going from Co iktown to Invercargill—or at least to Aucklan 1— at astep, and we make the journey perhaps a dozen times a day. And often, wliilc we are still shut up in our domiciliary Indian climate, Iceland come down upon us from an open window. Especially is this likely to occur in school, where children will instinctively seek to get a breath of fresh air that has - not had all its natural refreshing qualities quite cooked out of it by hot stoves, furnaces, or steam pipes. And all these sudden changes and shocks of eelil come upon us while the whole system has iis vitality and powerof resistance gauged down to the low necessities of a tropical climate. Medical Uses of Electricity.—Electricity ir. essentially a stimulant, but according b) ihe particular kind used to affect the human system wc. find higher or lower excitation produced. Thai which is produced by means of the friction electrical machine gives a sharp, quick stimulation to the body, while the kind gciicialcd in the voltaic battery Jv.s a - hover .slim illation. The induced eurr. m. a; produced by the galvano faradic balteiy is of n high stimulating quality, and is denominated the secondary current, in contradistinction to the primary, which is the direct cmiciit from the voltaic cells. It may be laid down as a fundamental principle that there are ju>t two great diseased conditions, one of which electrically considered is positive. or in medical language hypersthenic, while the other class is considered negative, or asthenic. Under the positive wo include all such as arc attended with inflammation, congestion, soreness, acute pains, bruises, fevers, sprains, extraneous growths, expanded muscles and swelling of all kinds. Under the negative are included paralysis, local or general debility, contracted muscles, nervous prostration, coldness of the extremities, torpid liver and inaction in any part of the system, with atrophy or tendency,to decomposition, local or general. In disease there is an imbalanced condition of the electric vital forces, and our bodies may be considered as an aggregation of delicately arranged organic compounds and simple elementary tissues, each of which possesses electrical qualities. When any agency, internal or external, produces a polarity or accumulation of either body in greater anuumt 1 loan naturally belongs to any portion of the system, then are produced the various symptoms of disease in that surcharged pail, and hence we conclude that (lie great requisite in curing' tin: disease is the removal of the exess of the electiie:ity, or in other words to change Ihe direct!' n (lie curren! to other pari, of the syM -in ami as w" hnv.. alreu iy ..lio'vn lint po.-iiivc repels pt.-alivc a a 1 ii'ra'iv" n p ■:-; irg.a! ive. while p.-'-it'W 0t! I -S i;";D ' c;l!| ouile r.-a i :: li■>■■ ■.: 1. nl■ ■<i'l rai Img in c'c.iii i 1 , tic, Mms of disease.