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Health and Temperance

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 3, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 9.

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Health and Temperance.

By Medical News

HAIR RESTORERS.

FOR the hair no dressing has been found to cause the desired gradual darkening without the aid of lead. Either it is mixed with sulphur in the bottle, or trusted to find enough in the hair to form there a deposit of the black sulphide of lead. The change of gray hair to something nearer the color of youth takes place so slowly that the user is easily duped by the assurance on the label on the bottle that the fluid is not a dye, but a tonic and restorative of hair vigor. If this were merely a case of deception it would scarcely merit the attention we have given it. But the deceiver is also a thief and a poisoner, stealing away the health that is the basis of natural beauty and daily increasing the need for artifice to make up an appearance for the, thing stolen.
From recent periodicals and works on toxicology a list of some length could be made of cases of all degrees of slow poisoning from lead hair dyes. The lead itself has even been recovered from the body after death in two cases of which we know. Doubtless if all the persons who have experienced harm from lead hair dyes could be counted, the number would be sensational enough to meet the wants of the most zealous sanitarian. The effects are often so vague that the cause is not suspected. Most physicians would not assign to a cosmetic, of the use of which they are presumably ignorant, the causation of such vague symptoms as dry and sallow skin, falling hair, dyspepsia, debility, low spirits, neuralgias and other usual phenomena of confirmed ill health. Yet these accompany and may exist apart from the sharp attack of colic or wrist drop, or joint pains, or brain trouble that would first direct the physician's suspicion to lead poisoning.
In this connection two important facts are now well established: First, that serious disease may be induced by the long continued use of lead "hair restorers." Second, that the most popular, if not all the "hair restorers," vegetable and other, contain lead.—Medical News.