The Vessels Of The Brain Are Naturally Lax, And
The Very Sutures Of The Skull Are Yet Unclosed.
What are the
consequences of this cruel swaddling?
The limbs are wasted; the
joints grow rickety; the brain is compressed, and a
hydrocephalus, with a great head and sore eyes, ensues. I take
this abominable practice to be one great cause of the bandy legs,
diminutive bodies, and large heads, so frequent in the south of
France, and in Italy.
I was no less surprised to find the modern fashion of curling the
hair, borrowed in a great measure from the coxcombs and coquettes
of antiquity. I saw a bust of Nero in the gallery at Florence,
the hair represented in rows of buckles, like that of a French
petit-maitre, conformable to the picture drawn of him by
Suetonius. Circa cultum adeo pudendum, ut coman semper in gradus
formatam peregrinatione achaica, etiam pene verticem sumpserit,
So very finical in his dress, that he wore his hair in the Greek
fashion, curled in rows almost to the crown of his head. I was
very sorry however to find that this foppery came from Greece. As
for Otho, he wore a galericulum, or tour, on account of thin
hair, propter raritatem capillorum. He had no right to imitate
the example of Julius Caesar, who concealed his bald head with a
wreath of laurel. But there is a bust in the Capitol of Julia
Pia, the second wife of Septimius Severus, with a moveable
peruke, dressed exactly in the fashionable mode, with this
difference, that there is no part of it frizzled; nor is there
any appearance of pomatum and powder.
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