Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1893 — The Hygiene of the Barber’s Shop. [ARTICLE]

The Hygiene of the Barber’s Shop.

Dr. A. Blaschko has published a papei on the hygiene of the barber’s shop, in which he enumerates the diseases which may be contracted in the barber’s chair, either directly from the barber or indirectly from his instruments and appliances. His list contains herpes tonsurans, impatigo contagiosa, acne varioliformis, trichorrhexis nodosa, impetiginous eczema, acute eczema, alopecia areata, syphilis, tuberculosis, and last, but not least, cholera, the infection of which, he thinks, might be conveyed by a napkin which had been used for wiping th« face of a person who was suffering from or recovering from cholera. The implements of the barber’s craft which, in Dr. Blaschko’s opinion, may carry infection are napkins and towels, the razoi itself, the shaving brush—which may itseliinitsown proper hairs suffer from trichorrhexis nodosa, sponges, powdei puffs, combs, and brushes. The list oi diseases is long and alarming, but to it may be added, perhaps, typhoid fever, which it has been thought, has sometimes been contracted by leaning over a basin with an improperly trapped wastepipe during the process of shampooing. That there is very real danger of catching skin diseases unless the barber is ver\ cleanly in all his arrangements and appliances, is undoubtedly true, and the immediate cause of Dr. Blasohko’s papei appears to have been an epidemic in Berlin of a disorder to which Saalfeld applied the term “dermatomycosis tonsurans.—[British Medical Journal.