Volume 2

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    115/600 (page 103)
    the results obtained by different observers. I shall, therefore, limit myself to the statement that in young females who have lost their hair by fevers, it has been observed to grow at the rate of 7 inches each year. When the growth is good the average length of hair on the female head will be found to vary from 22 inches to 28 inches. Anything beyond this must be regarded as exceptional. Cases, it is true, are recorded in which it has measured from 5 to 6 feet, but these are very rare. When compared, however, with the hair-growth of the North American Indians, even this falls very far short. A chief of the Crows is mentioned by Catlin as possess- ing hair of the almost incredible length of 10 feet 7 inches. It is only on occasions of ceremony that an American Indian allows his hair to hang exposed. As a rule it is carefully rolled round with a leathern strap, and when thus done up it weighs several pounds. In our own country custom does not permit man to vie with woman in the grov/th of the hair of the head. If the contest did arise I fear that man would be left very far behind. Si-me of you might wickedly insinuate that in the race unfair advantage might be taken by the fair sex : for not to refer to their Uelilah propensities, their power of appropriating what does not belong to them in the way of head gear might be called into play. But to be honest, we must admit that the male scalp does not possess such rich gifts as a hair-producing organ as the female scalp. And for what reason ? I would tire you were I to go into the various causes ascribed. Most of them are unsatisfactory. Let me give you one or two examples:—(1) that it is due to so much hair-making material being abstracted from the blood in man for the manufacture of the beard; (2) that it is due to the mental labours of man being of a more severe kind; (3) that hair finds in the female scalp a more congenial soil for its de- velopment and growth, owing to a supposed greater amount of fatty tissue under the integument of the head. * When we remember the beardless American Indian and his enormous power of hair-growth on the head there really does appear to be some grounds for this belief.