The Milwaukee Leader

Health Talks
BY WILLIAM BRADY, M. D.

MAY WE NOT WASH THAT DIRTY FEELING?
According to a legend squeamish folk are fond of reciting, King Victor Emmanuel, first or second, bet his courtiers that if he went without bathing for a month he would smell like a peasant. Of course they protested that a king would smell like a rose regardless. The king won the bet. The chap who writes the ads for the soap that penetrates the hypothetical pores ought to whip this yarn into shape for sales purposes.

A college girl, "majoring," if that is the word, in physiology and hygiene, decided to try out my teaching about the use or rather the uselessness of the toothbrush. That is to say, she scrapped the old brush and the odds and ends of dentifrices she had on hand, and worried along for a few weeks without 'em. But she weakened presently and took up anew the support of the brush and paste industry. She said her teeth felt so dirty and became unbearably foul with accumulated detritus, or some such horrible stuff.

Had the girl made the experiment 10 or 15 years ago, before the discovery of the mucus film, the result might have been different.

Fortunately Solomon never read the jimcrack magazines. Solomon was just wise, not Wise & Heimer. He rhapsodized over the body odor of his beloved. Wise & Heimer would purchase a package of Killit.

Rudyard Kipling recently offended English society by asserting that there were no bath tubs in London until after 1888 or somewhere around that period.

Yet Victor Emmanuel was strong for soap 100 years ago, and still stronger for want of it. Perhaps the Italian king took his baths standing. That's the hygienic and healthful way to take 'em today, if you must take a wet wash. Not only standing, but perhaps hopping about. Only very dirty folk indeed, or invalids, should get down and wallow in a bath. The shower or sponge bath taken on the run, so to speak, is a clean, sanitary, hygienic, healthful rite: the tub soak or wallow is something else again.

Several million people have now proved, to my satisfaction, if not to their own, that fairly faithful adherence to the rules about brushing the teeth does not prevent the teeth from decay. Whether these millions of faithful addicts go on using toothbrush and mysterious dentifrice or not, they should never falter in the effort to keep their teeth.

clean or dirty. it doesn't matter which.

A great many girls and women, succumbing to the passing craze or fad, have sought advice about "reducing," and from the information they give it is evident that most of them are suffering from that fat feeling and not from obesity. To my mind—and I place good looks second only to good health—these lovely women are just p. p.—not to annoy our skinny readers unnecessarily—and it would be a crime for them to reduce. Generally all they need is a reasonable amount of exercise, such as a daily rendition of the Second Brady symphony in any flat, which sort of takes up the slack and makes 'em feel trim and compact, if you know what I mean. Any p. p. reader afflicted with that fat feeling may have the complete score of the symphony for the trouble of telling me she wants it and enclosing with her request a stamped addressed envelope.

I think a great many people suffer with that dirty feeling just from the need of a sun bath, an air bath or a little exercise.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

No Guarantee.
A while ago you published a recipe guaranteed to cure falling hair and dandruff. I tried it and it proved fine. Now I want to get some put up for my sister but I have mislaid the recipe. * (Mrs. F. M.)

Answer—My new chariot developed sibilant rales the first few days. At the service station they charged about a dollar a rale for trying to remove 'em—just trying. I meekly asked the manager about the guarantee on the chariot, and he laughed boisterously and told me the guarantee didn't mean anything.

I might have known. At any rate I can tell you that any guarantee a doctor makes is a joke. Even the "iron bound" guarantee the quack or nostrum vendor offers the prospect is a joke. It doesn't mean anything. I never guaranteed the hair or dandruff remedy. I just admitted I believed it was pretty satisfactory. It is only temporary in effect—something like a permanent wave. You have to use it again when the dandruff comes back or the hair begins to fall. The remedy is an ointment made of one dram of precipitated sulphur, 20 grains of salicylic acid, and one ounce of cold cream. Rub a tiny bit into the scalp each night for a week, then shampoo, then repeat, for four or six weeks. Keep it off the hair: apply it to the scalp, by parting the hair here and there.

Uric Acid Obsession.
My blood seems to have a quantity of uric acid, causing red spots to appear all over my body. *(H. T.)

Answer—I cannot see how you arrive at that conclusion, and even if there were more uric acid in your blood than there should be—you know, of course, that some uric acid is normally present in the blood—I don't understand how you inculpate it. To the best of my knowledge uric acid causes no disease or complaint, not even gout, and so I advise you to forget all that and submit your trouble to a physician. Many thousands of persons with your obsession have experimented with diet and medicine purporting to be "good for uric acid" or to "eliminate uric acid," but nobody has ever arrived anywhere in these researches, except the poorhouse or a hospital ward.

(Copyright, John F. Dille Co.)