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Show HAIR DYEING AN ANCIENT ART. From Cleopatra Down Women Hare Ee sorted 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 Cle-opatra tried to capture Caesar. All through history ladies of fashion have tried to improve upon nature by artificially artifi-cially coloring that which St. Paul telle 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 noi ashamed to affix his name. The belle of belles in 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 foi bright blond hair, as to which there wai a tradition that it had been popular with the Greek hetairae. Blond beads blocked the thoroughfares, thorough-fares, and young ladies of good repute did not disdain to employ the dyer until bis services were monopolized by anothei class. In our day the popular color ij bright shade of auburn the blond cen- dre of the boulevards and silly girls g. through martyi doin to impart that tint to their locks. For the popularity ol blond hair the argonaut finds this excuse, ex-cuse, that it is rarer than black or browm hair and finer. Everybody knows thai the legend of the golden fleece was suggested sug-gested by the ardor with which Jason and other Greek connoisseurs pursued the blond haired maidens of Colchis. Almost all hair dj-es consist of sulpbui and acetate of lead, both of which art Injurious to so delicate a plant as human hair. A steady course of either will impair im-pair the vitality of the hair papilla and may destroy the medulla altogether. Women who bleach their hair use peroxide per-oxide of hydrogen, which after a time imparts an unnatural and wiglike lustex to the hair. A more dangerous dye stiD has for its basis nitrate of silver. When this is used, the hair is firs! washed with sulphuret of potassium. The nitrate is applied while it is still wet. In all these cases the drug is adulterated adul-terated with pigment of the desired color, and the effect for the time is tt substitute that color for the natural hut of the cortical substance or hair bark. It need hardly be 6aid that the effect oi a continued use of such medicaments ii to enfeeble and ultimately to rot the root eheaths. Baldness then ensues, and foi that science has discovered no remedy. Detroit Free Press. |