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Show I Early Ideas About Hair. All the ancient philosophers held curious ideas respecting the growth, functions, structure, etc., of the hair' and had many superstitions founded on these old opinions. The early writers on the makeup of the human body almost al-most invariably refer to the hair as be- ing an excrement fed on substances similar sim-ilar to itself. They supposed that It generated in the fuliginous parts of the blood; was exhaled by the heat of the body, becoming firm and fibrous upon being exposed to the air, just as the fluid of the spider web does. In these days every idea respecting the growth and character of hair is changed. It is now agreed that every hair properly and truly lives and receives re-ceives its nutriment from the body. True, they take upen themselves the nature na-ture of parasitic plants; they grow as vegetation does, yet each has, as it were, a distinct life and economy. That they derive their existence from the juices of the body there is no doubt, but that food is not taken from the nutritious juices, for we know that hair will thrive even though the body starve or be wasted by disease, or even after the animal life has ceased to exist in the flesh or 6kin to which they are at- tached. Chicago Tribune. |