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Cropping hair during a fever
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Author:  andydaly [ Tue Jan 13, 2009 5:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Cropping hair during a fever

Just reading over some drabbles, and noticed a reference to Mary-Lou having her hair cropped to prevent or reduce fever following her accident ("it might make all the difference between fever and insanity later").

I have also heard of the practice of cropping hair during a fever explained as an attempt to prevent infection of others following recovery of the sufferer, if the fever was the result of disease rather than accident.

Was this practice actually effective against the onset of fever? After the wonderfully informative threads on TB, I thought some of the learned ladies here might know - thanks!

Author:  JayB [ Wed Jan 14, 2009 10:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

I have no medical knowledge - but I suppose if you already had a fever, and had a lot of hair, cropping or shaving your hair might help to keep your temperature down. The reverse of the advice to wear a hat in cold weather, because so much heat is lost via the head. And obviously cutting the patient's hair very short would make life much easier for the nurses.

But whether cutting the patient's hair would actually prevent a fever, I don't know, but it seems unlikely.

Author:  MJKB [ Wed Jan 14, 2009 10:56 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

I think they did alot of cropping and shaving in those days for convenience rather than for any medical purposes. The first time I heard about that was in What Katy Did Next when little Amy Ashe has her hair cropped because of Roman Fever.

Author:  JS [ Wed Jan 14, 2009 1:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

Didn't Stacie have her hair cut after the accident to make it easier to manage? And a similar theme emerged with Lavender - didn't Auntie go up the wall when Dr Marilliar suggested it would be better for her to have it cut 'while she was growing'?

Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

My sense is that it's one of those Victorian and early 20thc notions of nursing which probably have little or no basis in any physiological reality, but which were thought to be necessary in their day. You see it done as a matter of course in a lot in 19th and early 20thc novels - Catherine Earnshaw has her hair 'partly removed' when she has 'brain fever' in Wuthering Heights, as the other commenter said there's What Katy Did Next, where they crop the sick child's doll's hair as well. and I remember some early 20thc short story I read as a child which featured a minor character introduced as 'Eunice, who had fever and a crop' - which suggests that girls' hair was routinely cropped when they were feverish.

I suppose it would have made more objective sense when girls and women often had very long, heavy hair, which might genuinely have seemed as if it added to them being overheated and feverish. Doesn't Jo March, after she's sold her hair, make some reference to her head feeling light and cool? You also get lots of references in period books to girls' hair being 'too much for them' in hot weather, or 'taxing their strength' - there are elements of that in the CS books, with Ted's hair seen as needing thinning, and Simone's self-cropping of 'all that mass of hair' being seen as possibly a good thing in the heat. There's also the recognition that hairslides would hurt Stacie's head if she's flat on her back for months, so her hair is bobbed.

I have to say that in Mary-Lou's case, as often in period girls' fiction, I think the primary aim was to be able to give one of EBD's favourite characters a makeover, so she ends up with desirable curly hair (and a new slender build into the bargain). You get the same 'growing back curly' thing in other books - Amy Ashe's hair grows again curly in WKDN (and Katy buys a doll's wig so that her doll's hair does the same), and when Anne in Anne of Green Gables has to have her hair cropped short after she accidentally dyes it green (hello, Joey!), her hair grows back a desirable much darker red than its original colour, and curly also. Although it occurs to me that it's probably less a matter of some kind of change in the hair itself, than in the change from very long hair, whose weight made it straight, to short hair which was lighter and more able to wave...

Given how much EBD clearly disapproves of perms in schoolgirls, I suppose cropping ML's head was the only allowable way of giving her curls!

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

A cousin of mine lost her hair due to chemotherapy, and it grew back curly whereas it'd previously been straight, so it does happen!

I assume that the logic of cutting hair was, as other people have said, to help to keep the head cool (and maybe also just to get the hair out of the doctors' way if they were treating a head injury). I can't imagine that it would have made a difference between "fever and insanity" though :roll: .

Author:  Pat [ Wed Jan 14, 2009 8:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

Alison H wrote:
A cousin of mine lost her hair due to chemotherapy, and it grew back curly whereas it'd previously been straight, so it does happen!
.


I was told that it's the chemo that produces the curl though - it kinks the hair follicle. Mine grew back curly too, but since having a couple of trims it seems to be getting straighter again - so not a permanent change.

Author:  Kate [ Thu Jan 15, 2009 6:17 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

I suspect length and weight could have something to do with the curls too - my cousin has riotous curls when her hair is short but it's quite straight when it's long because the weight pulls them out.

Author:  JB [ Thu Jan 15, 2009 5:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

Quote:
I was told that it's the chemo that produces the curl though - it kinks the hair follicle.


That makes sense to me. My hair used to be completely straight but is now definitely wavy in a longish bob (it was very short for a while before this). I take weekly chemotherapy drugs for arthritis and I've wondered if it was down to them.

Author:  MJKB [ Thu Jan 15, 2009 6:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

As a child I had barge pole straight hair but as soon as I reached puberty it developed a kink, which I hate. I'd sooner go without clothes as be without a hair dyer. Two of my sisters had wavier hair than I and use to iron it in the seventies! I think most fine straight hair tends to go kinky after a while.

Author:  Jennie [ Fri Jan 16, 2009 3:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

I wish! But my hair does wave slightly when it's very long.

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Sat Jan 17, 2009 7:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

My sister had straightish hair when she was younger cut it short and now has extremely curly hair. Most of brothers and sisters ended up with curly hair once they hit their teen years.

Author:  andydaly [ Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

Thanks to everyone for that! I did assume that it was more for comfort and convenience, or alternatively, just a knee-jerk nursing reaction (fever = haircut) but EBD is so adamant as to the importance of it that I thought I must be missing something! :D

Author:  Tara [ Fri Jan 23, 2009 6:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

Just found this and had a chuckle. I had very long, thick plaits in my youth (I'm 60 now) and had to have them cut off because our (rather elderly) doctor insisted that my strength was going into my hair :D . It was the same doctor who treated my chronic bronchitis (from growing up in wet Wales, it disappeared when I moved to a drier part of the country) by making me wear garlic cloves under my feet (they were kept on with socks and I walked on my heels ...). It all sounds a bit like witchcraft now, but would have been familiar to EBD, I'm sure. The past is a foreign country ...

Author:  Cath V-P [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 7:07 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

Heavens Judith, that sounds like a Miss Read book where the dour Mrs Pringle recommends a fried mouse to stop a cough. Miss R comments (to herself) that in her case a fried mouse would successfully stop respiration, let alone a cough..... :D

With the hair, I think part of it was the awareness that it would be difficult to keep tidy, let alone properly clean while the patient was in bed. And EBD grew up at a time when it was nursing rather than the doctor's treatment (despite the exalted position of the doctor in the CS world) that was the important thing. I'm not implying that nursing isn't important today, btw - just that there was so much less that the great doctor could do then....

Author:  Selena [ Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

Given that Joey seemed to spend a lot of time in bed due to fainting or being sick or 'busy' i'm supprised she never had her hair cropped as an adult, especially since she always seemed to prefer short hair when she was younger.

Could this be due to Dr Jack having more modern doctor's training? Or did he like her having long hair, so defended her from any scissor-brandishing nurses?

Author:  SMG [ Sun Feb 01, 2009 6:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

Have read about hair being cropped during an attack of typhoid fever in the 1870s.It was to keep down the patient's temperature...in the days far before antibiotics. All rather harrowing reading as the patient (May Lyttelton) died in the end..hair or no hair.Of course, the majority of women wd have had long hair then ,I suppose.
What do nurses/doctors advise today in cases of highfever?

Author:  Cel [ Sun Feb 01, 2009 8:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

SMG wrote:
What do nurses/doctors advise today in cases of highfever?


Paracetamol! Which apparently was first marketed in the US in 1953 (thank you, Wikipaedia), so wouldn't have been available until the later CS years. I think Aspirin would have been the main drug used for fever before that. Nowadays we use Ibuprofen a lot as well, that can be quite effective in bringing down a temp. And simple things like removing clothes and using fans.
I'm working in Paediatrics at the moment, and can only imagine the look on any parent's face if we suggested cutting off their child's hair when they were febrile... I don't think there's any evidence that it works.

Author:  MaryR [ Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

Quote:
And simple things like removing clothes and using fans.

Even in the Seventies they were stripping children and using fans. My daughter spent a lot of time in hospital from being a young baby and used to develop a fever at the drop of a hat. She would be stripped immediately and have a couple of fans playing on her - never mind her poor mum who would end up freezing to death beside her. :lol:

Author:  JS [ Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Cropping hair during a fever

My husband was reading something about some doctor who treated Princess (Queen?) Henrietta when she was ill by shaving her head and tying pigeons to her feet. We don't know if it worked or not.

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