Falling Hair.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXII, Issue XIV, 2 April 1904, Page 63

Falling Hair.

Can falling hair be successfully and satisfactorily treated?

Most emphatically “Yes!” 1 would guarantee to make a vast difference in the hair of ninety per cent, of girls in the space of six weeks, if they would only promise to faithfully and regularly carry out the treatment ordered (says a specialist writing in “Home Chat * ). It is no use at all to make spasmodic efforts at brushing and massaging and electric treatment, and the application of wonderful hair-restorers of unknown ingredients. “Discover the cause, then apply the proper treatment,” is the golden rule. The chief causes of falling hair are dandruff of the scalp, and a condition of lowered vitality and dryness of the hair, which is most commonly found in girls suffering from anaemia. Dandruff, technically known as “seborrhoea,” is an affection from which most people suffer at one time or another, and it is easily enough recognised by t Inscaly or scurvy condition of the head, the dry. lustreless hair, and the fact that the hair comes out steadily in spite of all the brushing ami the hair applications which are tried. One can conli dently anticipate satisfactory results if the following treatment be faithfully carried out.

Any chemist will procure a soap for you called “resorcin, sulphur and salicylate soap,*’ a medicinal soap of ordinary appearance, costing about sixpence, which is to be applied to the scalp in a lather with warm water at night. The lather is to be well rubbed into the scalp and left on for about live minutes; the hair then rinsed thoroughly with warm water, and dried with hot

towels. This is done for three consecutive nights, and each morning a little bril liantine must be well brushed into the hair. The treatment must be thorough t o be of any use. The same washings at night and the morning applications of brilliantine are to be continued twice a week for a fortnight. then once a week for a month, when tin- hair should be marked ly improved, and the loss of hair effectually slopped.

In less serious cases of dandruff a simpler treatment will prove .-ffeclual. A liquid soap, made up of equal parts of soft soap and rectified spirits (say, three ounces of each) is an excellent shampoo.

The hair is to be washed with a lather of soap and warm water, and afterwards thoroughly rinsed in lukewarm water. This soap should be regularly used once a month by anyone with a tendency to dandruff’; and. if the hair is dry, a few drops of brilliantine may be well brushed into the hair about twice a week at night.

An ointment of precipitated sulphur in cold cream (in the proportion of one in ten) is a most efficient application in dandruff associated with dryness. If this be rubbed in every night for a week, and the hair shampooed with the soft soap and rectified spit its mentioned above, at the end of the week, it may be all that is required in mild cases.

But do not forget to use absolutely clean brushes, to nightly brush the hair and, whenever possible, to dry it in the fresh air, and get ail the sunshine pos sible.

Anaemia is often the cause of falling hair, the scalp being poorly nourished with blood deficient in quality. Cure the anaemia, and the falling hair is verv simply disposed of. For the hair it sell, the following prescription will be found of value, rubbed in night and morning. Any chemist will make it up: Liquor carbonis detergens, one ounce; glycerini, four drachms; apuae distillatae, four ounces.

Brilliantine, or simple lard, or a little lauoline and vaseline rubbed or massaged into the hair with the finger-tips about twice a week will help to nourish and strengthen the hair-bulbs in anaemia. Electricity, properly applied by a com petent person, will often do good in cases of lowered vitality of the scalp ami hair.