Page:Science ofDress270.png

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
270
The Science of Dress.
[CHAP. XV.

To the present fashion of dressing the hair on the top of the head the Lancet[1] attributes the prevalence and increasing frequency of neuralgic headache among women, and its remarks on this subject are worth noting and laying before the fair sex, into whose hands that paper rarely comes. It says, "The pain experienced is generally located in one or more of the branches of the second cervical nerve, very commonly those terminating in the scalp at the occiput. As a matter of fact the nerves of the scalp are irritated by the hair being drawn tightly back and put on the strain, not as a whole, in which case the strain would be spread over a large area of the surface, but by small bundles of hair which are pulled back and held in place by hair-pins. Relief is often consciously experienced as a result of removing the hair-pins, but this has only a temporary and partial effect. The injury done is lasting, if not permanent in its consequences."

In short, it is needless to multiply instances in support of the proposition which I have previously advanced to the effect that—Health and beauty go hand in hand, and indeed from the point of view of language they are intimately related, for our word health, connected with the other English words hale and whole (whole ought to be spelt hole) are derived from the same source as the Greek word kalos, which meant beauty.

Yet health is neglected and slighted every day, while there are few who would not sell their very

  1. July 18th, 1885, p. 124.