Filler

The passing of the beard

DR. ALEXANDER DOWNIE in his new Zion, from which he has banished all regular professors of the healing art, has lately issued an ordinance making the wearing of beards compulsory on all men. Elsewhere, however, there are signs that the doom of the beard is written in the book of fate. Fashion and hygiene are for once combined in one object, and that is the elimination of the beard. A few years ago our gilded youth were bearded like the pard, or as nearly so as Nature permitted; now what Parolles calls "valour's excrement" is practically a forbidden thing to "smart" young men, even as a decent covering for a feeble chin. Hygiene is equally ruthless. A German surgeon some time ago vehemently denounced the beard as a fertile source of infection during operations. Quite recently it has been stated, with what authority we are unable to say, that the German Emperor has decreed that those among his lieges who practise medicine or surgery shall cut off their beards. So sweeping an order sounds rather improbable even as coming from a potentate whose motto is Summa lex regis voluntas. But the German Emperor, like the prophet Habakkuk, is capable of anything when he is bitten by an idea. And such an order would be in accord with the teachings of hygienic science, for your Teutonic professor is often like Bottom in his "translated" conditionmarvellously hairy about the face. In another hemisphere it is announced that the Milk Commission of New York has ordered that hereafter smoothfaced men only shall be employed for milking cows and delivering milk to the various dépôts throughout the State. The reason given is that the dust from the stable is liable to infect the beard, which will collect and hold microbes that may readily impregnate the milk. Unless the beard can retrieve its sanitary character we fear it is destined to become as rare as an appendix already is within the sphere of influence of certain Transatlantic surgeons. (BMJ 1902;ii:273)