Slaphead Science: A Brief History of Baldness Cures

The great Greek doctor Hippocrates treated his patients' baldness with pigeon droppings. Aristotle, as brilliant as he was, tried goats urine to remedy his own baldness. Julius Caesar was bald, which is ironic because the name Caesar, from the Latin "caesaries," means "abundant hair." His gal Cleopatra prepared pastes for him made of ground horse teeth and deer marrow. (Rancid hippo fat was apparently passe in the Egyptian courts by this time.)

Alas, Cleopatra's salves didn't work. Neither did Roman cures of sulfur, tar, and the finest samples of animal urine from around the Mediterranean. Julius caved in and simply tried to cover his bare head; he took to wearing wreaths of laurel. (He was known as the king of bad comb-overs, too, according to Roman scribe Pliny.) The mighty Hannibal was bald and didn't like it one bit. Like Captain Kirk in Star Trek, Hannibal was never in a fight scene without his toupee.

Based on an Everglades National Park Photo A Crocodile reaches the end of his tether after teasing from fellow river dwellers about being a possible cure for baldness.

Baldness treatments such as urine and rancid fat survived the fall of the Roman Empire, unlike those worthless, pagan tomes on geometry and iambic pentameter. The Renaissance brought cow saliva. (Ah, cow saliva, not cow urine. Progress.) Meanwhile in China, treatments moved forward with the introduction of animal testes mixed with ground herbs. Meditation and headstands had long been a standard cure there and in India.

With the advent of modern technology in the late 1800s, baldness treatment entered the realm of the titillating: electric shock, vibrators, motorized scalp massagers, and suction devices.

Nice Try, But It's Wrong...

What do all these treatments have in common, aside from the potential of making you look foolish? They all work on three premises: increasing blood flow to the scalp, unclogging pores or hair follicles, and providing nutrients. Maybe these treatments really do that. These aren't the causes of baldness, though.

Baldness, for the most part, is genetic. You'd have to be literally starving to lose your hair due to poor nutrition. This is certainly possible, but far from likely. You don't need extra blood up there either. The head is already flush with blood. The brain kind of needs blood, and the body makes sure to deliver it through two massive arteries in your neck called the carotids.

The clogged pore idea is straight-out wrong, unless you're coating your scalp with sealing wax... or rancid hippo fat. You can lose your hair from stress, medication, or chemotherapy, but usually the hair grows back.