Everyday Ways to Care your Hair
Health, strength and beauty of hair depends primarily on its
nerve vigor and the good circulation of the oily scalp secretion
which gives it gloss and luster. Beauty is not so much a matter
of color where hair is concerned. If your hair has a fine glow,
a rich sheen, is thick and long, it will be beautiful
irrespective of its pigmentation. Hair often makes an otherwise
plain person beautiful. And practically every woman, if she
cares to make the effort, may have beautiful hair.
SOME HAIR HINTS
If you have the least suspicion of a curl in your hair,
brushing around rather than straight will bring it out. Do not
worry if you shed your hair. It is natural for the hair to shed
— and to keep right on growing in again. Only see to it
that the ingrowth is equal to the loss by shedding. No young
girl should use a rat. Metal combs should be tabooed. Keep the
hairbrush you use for dandruff stiff, the "polishing" brush may
be softer. Use a hair net that matches your own hair color, and
do not get too small a one. Remove snarls and tangles in the
hair gently, with fingers, before brushing. The three-weekly or
monthly shampoo is a good rule. If you wash your hair too often,
it will turn dry and brittle and change color.
The hair should never be worn "done up" constantly. This is
injurious because every part of the hair should have frequent
air and sun baths. For normal shampoo employ Castile, tar or
vegetable soaps, and Green soap for oily hair. A good egg
shampoo may be made of an egg, thoroughly beaten, one tablespoon
alcohol, four ounces bay rum, a pinch of borax, and four ounces
of Castile soap mixed in a pint of hot water, to be used when
cool.
Hair that is blonde or ruddy, as well as gray hair, may be
washed with Castile soap jelly plus a quarter-teaspoonful of
borax. Always comb and brush thoroughly, with finger-tip
massage. After shampooing is the best time for scalp massage,
hair pulling and skin loosening.
DRY SHAMPOO AND SCALP MASSAGE
The scalp and hair should be cleansed between shampoos. For
this purpose the "dry shampoo" is necessary. It is actually a
form of scalp massage. Preparations of orris, corn meal and
other dry shampoo powders are not recommended. They stick, and
it is hard to get them out of the hair. A vigorous rubbing of
the scalp after the hair has been parted, using a small piece of
muslin over the tip of the finger, is best. Hot and cold
applications are good, with or without shampoo, especially if
the hair is falling. Remember that the hair should not be
"hot-air" dried. The hot-air cone used for the purpose in
hairdressing establishments destroys the hair. Human hair should
always be dried by hand.
Scalp massage makes the hair grow and prevents many hair
troubles. A five-minute finger-tip mas- sage, night and morning,
is the one ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure. The
electrical massage by a professional (after a shampoo), the
violet ray, and the rubber-disk vibrator are all excellent for
the hair. They strengthen and stimulate.
HAIR TONICS
Massage is the first and best hair tonic. Though a good scalp
lotion may stimulate circulation, massage always does so more
directly. In general it will be wise to remember that tonics are
meant for specific purposes of cure for hair disorders, rather
than for common use. A little refined beef marrow rubbed gently
into the hair roots is a good natural tonic (though an
old-fashioned one) and together with plenty of fresh air and
sunshine, does more for the hair than all the compounded tonics
and "restorers" marketed. Every woman can keep her hair in good
condition if she chooses to. If she cannot give it attention in
the morning she shoulcf do so at night.
HAIR TROUBLES
Most hair troubles could be prevented in the start by ordinary
good care of the hair, and the maintenance of the state of
general good health. Of course, various diseases affect the
hair: fever dries it out and makes it fall; syphilis and other
sex diseases poison and destroy it. Some skin diseases have the
same effect. In general, if you are healthy, broadly speaking,
your hair will be healthy too.
Dandruff—What we have to deal with in dandruff is a horny
layer cast off by the scalp. This layer thickens, closes the
pores, diminishes the hair's oil supply, and prevents the
perspiration glands from getting rid of waste. Soon the hair
loses tone and color, and is covered with whitish powder. Then
it starts to itch and fall. In an advanced state of the disease,
the hair falls out, and blood crusts form on the scalp as a
result of scratching. Digestive disorders, toxic elements in the
blood or local irritation may cause dandruff, and it is
communicable.
Daily care of the scalp, massage and brushing, if persisted in
when the disorder first appears, are very beneficial. The crude
oil massage of the scalp, not the hair, is excellent and often
effects a cure. A massage every night, using vaseline or olive
oil, together with repeated shampoos, also helps to do away with
dandruff. Although pomades in general should be avoided, a
pomade with a precipitated sulphur base, mixed with glycerine,
rose-water, lanoline, and soap, or a sulphur ointment or cream
kills the dandruff germ.
There is an "oily dandruff," also, though the disease is most
commonly a dry scalp one. Shampoo with tincture of Green soap
should cure this type of the disease in about a week's time. If
you have dandruff, observe a regular diet, and stick as much as
possible to milk and fresh fruit.
Falling Hair.—An acid condition of the blood encourages
the hair to fall. Correct it and you will have removed the cause
of your complaint. The use of the violet ray and the vibrator,
which hold down the tendency to an oily scalp, is also valuable
for hair treatment in this connection. So, too, are hot and cold
applications.
HAIR DISEASES WHICH SHOULD NOT OCCUR
Favus, the development of yellow scalp crusts, accompanied by
severe itching, bald spots and a musty odor, is a dirt disease,
hence inexcusable in a woman, unless as a result of infection.
To remove it the scalp must be soaked in olive oil for a few
days, carbolic acid being mixed with it in a weak solution, the
hair pulled out of the most infected areas, the crusts removed,
and the whole scalp shampooed with an antiseptic soap.
Ringworm is usually a gift of those evil things, the "common
property" comb and brush, or the patent hair clipper. Rubbing
with sulphur ointment, washing with bichloride soap, or painting
with iodine, to precede the application of a cleansing ointment,
is the treatment. It is dangerous since it may result in
baldness.
Head lice (which may be cured by saturating the hair with
kerosene or crude petroleum at night, wrapping in a towel to
retain fumes, and following by antiseptic soap shampoo) is a
most disgusting trouble, and unless communicated cannot occur
except as a result of neglect and uncleanliness. The possibility
of contagion constitutes the menace of all three of these
diseases.