Smyrna Times

Shaving the Face.

Dr. E. Sanborn, of Andover, writes to the Boston Surgical Journal quite an interesting letter in favor of wearing the beard. He takes the ground that the custom of shaving the beard among nations of men is always attended or followed by a marked deterioration in the physical organization, not only of the existing race of people, but of the race to come, and quotes examples from history to support his conclusions. He says that the aboriginal inhabitants of our soil and climate were once brave, powerful and numerous; but they waged war against nature by uprooting the beard from their faces and consequently become more and more effeminate with every generation, until they become an easy prey to their enemies and are themselves uprooted from the face of the earth.

He cites the Chinese, too, as a people who have been shorn of their locks and of their strength together, until, as a nation, they have only a nominal existence; and he says of the Abrahamic race, whose creed it is to preserve unmarked "the corner of their beards," that he never saw a case of pauperism, premature debility or premature disease among them.

He says:

"The habit of shaving is not of 'origin divine,' as thousands seem to think, but quite the reverse. The ancient patriarchs, the holy prophets, Christ and his disciples, and the earlier and probably purer Christians, deemed it a violation of the laws of their nature. Alexander enforced it upon his army that they might thereby gain a bloodier conquest. The nobility of Spain adopted it through courtesy to their beardless prince. The mass of course subjected to the humiliating process, but expressed their repugnance to the outrage in the well known proverb-'Since we have lost our beards, we have lost our souls'-that is, ourselves, our identity. We are rather soulless slaves, than the men our Maker made and designed us to be."

Dr. Sanborn concludes with calling upon every free-born son of America to shake off all conventionalities which oppress humanity, and especially such as insidiously tend to vitiate and depress the true manliness of man, and he implores all mothers, sisters and wives to second these efforts and exercise their good taste in creating and sustaining such purely American customs and fashions as will to the end of time render them and their descendants more excellent in all the relations of life.