Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1894 — HAIR DYEING AN ANCIENT ART. [ARTICLE]

HAIR DYEING AN ANCIENT ART.

From Cleopatra Down Women Have Resorted to the Dangerous Practice. The art of dyeing the hair is at least as old as the time of Christ; it was by resorting to such aids to beauty that Cleopatra tried to capture Caesar. All through history ladies of fashion have tried to improve upon nature by artificially coloring that which St. Paul tells us is their glory. In the heyday of Venice, the facile beauties of the city of the lagoons dyed their hair a red to which Titian was not ashamed to affix his name. The belle of belles ih that day had red hair, not bright red, but a dull red, with glints of crimson. More recently, almost in our own time, a rage arose for bright blonde hair, as to which there was a tradition that it had been popular with the Greek betaira?. Blonde heads blocked the thoroughfares, and young ladies of good repute did not disdain to employ the dyer until his services were monopolized by another class. In our day, the popular color is a bright shade of anburn. the blonde cendre of the boulevards, and silly girls go through martyrdom to impart that tint to their locks. For the popularity of blonde hair the argonaut finds this excuse, that it Is rarer than black or brown hair, and, finer. Everybody knows that the legend of the golden fleece was suggested by the ardor with which Jackson and* other Greek connoisseurs pursued the blonde-haired maidens of Colchis. Alihost all hair dyes consist of sulphur and acetate of lead, both of which are injurious to so delicate a plant as human hair. A steady course of either will impair the vitality of the hair papilla and may destroy the medulla altogether. Women who bleach their hair use peroxide of hydrogen, which, after a time,

I imparts an unnatural and wig-like luster to the hair. A more dangerous dye still has for its bases nitrate of silver. When this is used the hair is first washed with sulphuret of potassium: the nitrate is applied while it is still wet. In all these cases the drug is adulterated with a pigment of the desired color and the effect for the time is to substitute that color for the natural hue of the cortical substance or hair bark. It need hardly be said that the effect of a continued use of such medicaments is to enfeeble and ultimately to rot the root sheaths. Baldness then ensues, and for that science has discovered no remedy.