Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: rest of the hair. The result was surprising. In some. cases the numbers were equal, but generally the growth became slower after cutting, and I have never observed an increase of rapidity. As a rule, among the hairs daily falling out we shall find short ones, even in the best growing hair. Sometimes they are torn-off pieces, but as a rule they have point and ' root, ' and .have therefore entirely completed the course of their existence. These are generally furnished by the edges of the whole hair. Where the hair leaves off there is a narrow transition strip on which short hairs are produced; sometimes they appear amongst the rest. I have attempted to rest the knowledge of the whole first stage of chronic hair-wasting on this basis. Because the hair itself is not supplied with sensitive nerves, and also from a certain resemblance it bears to a blade of grass, the hair has been regarded as a vegetable structure; hence have arisen ideas concerning what is called the hair-root that require rectification. The root is the foundation of the plant; a plant torn up by its root is cut off in its existence: in this sense the hair has no root. But the part which nourishes the hair always remains in the skin as an integral part of the same. On every hair that falls out we observe at the lower end of the shaft a little knotty swelling of somewhat paler colour. This swelling, resembling a bulb, has received the name 'hair- root;' and although this designation is quite inapplicable, it appears it must be considered firmly established, and I will also make use of it for the sake ot shortness. But I wish expressly to state that this knot is only the termination of the hair; it never was the matrix, for this remains in the skin. It may wear away and lose its productive power, but it never fal...