CHAPTER VIII. CAN MUSCULAR ACTION CHANGE THE DIRECTION OF HAIR IN THE INDIVIDUAL?

It might seem unnecessary to most persons who are good enough to follow this inquiry that the question asked above should receive an explicit answer. We all know, of course, how a man’s hair is said to stand on end in excessive states of horror or rage, and how a short-haired terrier’s back bristles at the sight of certain foes. But it is not so simple a matter to show that the direction of the hair is permanently changed. I submit that the persons I mention are right in their opinion for this work contains evidence throughout that muscular action beneath the skin is the efficient cause in many regions of the formation of hair patterns. But like Kirkpatrick when Bruce struck down the Red Comyn we had best “make sicker,” and give as much evidence of the affirmative question as any critic can demand.
Hairs of Human Eyebrows.

As in the previous chapter I chose an open and plain field for the evidence bearing on the formation of whorls and the like, so here I turn to one still more clear for him who runs to read. In these days old men are of less account than in earlier and simpler times, but I claim to have found “a new use for old men” as I had almost thought of calling this chapter. In this somewhat neglected group we have an almost unlimited number of specimens for examina-tion, and in their eyebrows they furnish a valuable field for tracing some striking results of underlying muscular traction.

Darwin made one of his few mistakes when he included among rudimentary and inherited structures48 those few long hairs which are often seen in the eyebrows of man, looking upon them as representatives of those found in some species of macacus and the chimpanzee. That great and modest man was, I am sure, not in the habit of making much use of the looking-glass—not more than women who, as we know, rarely do such a thing. But if he did
he would have observed in his own splendid frontal region and brows excellent examples of the phenomena which form the subject of this chapter. This I know, though I never saw him in the flesh, for it so happens that in the great volume published in the jubilee of The Origin, and called Darwin and Modern Science, two good photographs of him, at the ages of thirty-five and about seventy-one are reproduced. These both show, but the later one much more clearly, good examples of these long and not very ornamental aberrant hairs. Thirty-five years of arduous thought and work had told their tale on him and twisted from their normal paths the lengthening thickening hairs of his eyebrows.

Also, if he had looked a little beyond the eyebrows he would have seen some very deep wrinkles of the skin on his forehead and round his orbits. It is these two groups of facts, wrinkles and twisted, changed hairs of man’s eyebrows, which give the answer to the question “Can muscular action change the direction of hair in the individual?”

In 1903 I drew the attention of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland to these two groups of facts under the title “Notes on the Eyebrows of Man,” and presented some large drawings of individual elderly men of my acquaintance, and the present chapter is only an extension of that little piece of work.

No area of the mammalian skin is so useful and easy to follow as this in answering the present question, for though the previous chapter supplied part of the answer in a very fruitful field, the proof still remained one of “tremendous probability” and not more. But in the frontal and superciliary region of man there is complete proof of the truth of the affirmative answer, as I shall show.

Here again we must encounter our old friend the normal slope of hair. As I stated in 1903, “The normal arrangement of the hair on the eyebrows of a moderately hairy subject is as follows: in the middle line the hairs of the two sides tend to meet and form a somewhat confused group of hairs; passing away from the middle line the hairs assume a nearly sagittal direction, then become more sloped away, and a sharp change in the direction of the frontal and orbital streams brings the remaining hairs into that regular accurate arrangement of a united stream so characteristic of a hairy subject, and this passes along the superciliary ridge to the external angular process”—all of which can be seen at a glance by any one who looks closely enough, as with the eyes of a lover, for example, at the brows of a dark-haired maid or youth. In the young these hairs lie close to the skin, and with that very interesting group of persons we have no more to do here, except
for one piece of practical advice to them which they will find at the end of the present chapter.
Evidence from Artists.

More than one kind of evidence may be brought forward in this case, and I propose to “put in” a certain class of witness that not the most acute cross-examining counsel, Daniel O’Connell, Hawkins, or even Sergeant Buzfuz, can shake. I pity that young man or woman to-day who has not mended several holes in his education by reading the books of Dickens and Lever in editions illustrated by the immortal Phiz. If I do no more for him by this passage than induce him to mend such holes I shall have been of some use to his mind. For my part I look upon Phiz as far superior to Hogarth or Cruikshank in the fidelity to nature of his drawings of the faces of his numerous characters, especially the old men. Look through Dombey & Son, Bleak House, Pickwick Papers, Barnaby Rudge, Tom Burke, Jack Hinton, Harry Lorrequer, The O’Donohue, and, perhaps best of all for the illustrations, The Knight of Gwynne. Examine, with a lens if necessary, the delicate way in which Phiz shows the projecting hairs on the eyebrows of his many elderly men, and note at the same time the truth to scientific fact which he shows in his female characters, for only in the drawings of “Mrs. Gamp proposes a toast” and of Mrs. Pipchin in “Paul and Mrs. Pipchin,” and one or two doubtful instances, can I find that he represents even his elderly women with this feature of their eyebrow hairs. But see Captain Cuttle and Mr. Bunsby in “Solemn references to Mrs. Bunsby,” both with strongly-marked shelves of hair sticking out from the brows, Captain Cuttle in “The shadow in the little parlour,” one of the fat coachmen in “Mr. Weller and his friends drinking to Mr. Pell”—the sharp brush projecting from the brow of Bagnet in “Mr. Smallweed breaks the pipe of peace,” that of Vholes in “Attorney and Client, fortitude and impatience”—(the equally remarkable absence of this feature in Pecksniff, Chadband and Skimpole, men without character or feeling)—Gashford in “Lord George Gordon,” the fat figure in “The Gallant Vintner,” Pioche in “Minette in attendance on Pioche,” the courtier in “Louis XIV. and de Genchy,” “The death of Shaun,” the blind man in “Joe the mighty hunter,” the right hand figure in “Mr. O’Leary creating a sensation,” Sir Archibald Mc’Nab in “A fireside group,” “Roade’s return to O’Donoughue Castle,” Sandy Mc’Grane and Old Hickman in “Sandy expedites the doctor,” Daly in “Daly bestows a helmet on Bully Dodd,” the knight in
“The Knight is taken Prisoner.”

Another witness to the scientific facts of the frequent presence of these hairs on the eyebrows of elderly men, and the rarity of them in those of women, is the dear friend of our youth, our friend even to hoar hairs, the Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear. Here in 110 vivid drawings of several hundred characters, each of them sketched with a few bold strokes, is inscribed again and again this peculiar feature. Look at the “Old man with a nose,” the “Old Man of th’Abruzzi,” the “Old man of Melrose,” the “Old man of Calcutta,” the “Old Person of Anerley,” the “Old Person of Chester,” all with strange and striking bushes of long hairs standing out from their brows. Again see how hardly one of the female characters shows a trace of it even in that most truculent “Grandmother of the Young Person of Smyrna” who threatened to burn her, though her vertical wrinkles are formidable, or in the remarkable face of the wife of the “Old Man of Peru.” The “Old Lady of Prague” shows it in a moderate degree. Support of this kind may be trivial, and so will the opposing counsel say is that of a burglar’s finger-prints, but, qua evidence, it is as strong as that which commits the criminal to a prison on this modern proof. No one can suppose that Phiz and Lear fifty or sixty years ago had a prophetic and treacherous insight into the harmless labours of a man in the year 1920 who would exploit their labours to the advantage of his hypothesis, and that they faked their caricatures for such a purpose. This is the only alternative line for Sergeant Buzfuz to take unless he acknowledge the facts to be facts, and betake himself to abuse of the plaintiff’s attorney.
Eyebrows Interpreted by Wrinkles.

When one comes to the interpreta-tion of the curious shapes taken by these hairs one is not left to inference, for Nature has put some indelible stamps on the forehead and round the orbits of the men examined. These are wrinkles which have been long in prepara-tion and only begin to show themselves fully when the “evil days” have come, in the ’fifties, ’sixties and ’seventies.

I will describe the wrinkles first, and then their results, with examples, in the numerous fashions of the hairs. Wrinkles are of two kinds, pathological and physiological, in other words the former are the results of degenera-tion and wasting of the subcutaneous fat and loss of its normal elasticity, and are found in the faces of nearly all men and women, with advancing age, and they are the subject of much distress in the fair sex and a good deal of “beauty doctoring.” The latter are the result of long-continued and repeated action of certain small muscles. The former are
numerous, shallow and fine, the latter few and comparatively deep. The difference between elderly women and men in respect of the projecting hairs is not that men have many more physiological wrinkles, but that the hairs of women in this region do not stiffen and grow long nearly so much as those of men.

There are three groups of wrinkles found on the human forehead and face, vertical, arched or horizontal and orbital. This division of wrinkles is a natural one, for each group is produced by the action of different muscles, the vertical by the corrugator muscle, which is a narrow band passing from under the frontalis muscle inwards, where it is attached to the bone between the two eyebrows; the arched by the action of the frontalis muscle, one which moves the scalp and in doing so elevates the eyebrows; the orbital by the elliptic orbicularis muscle which closes the eyelids. These muscles are shown in Fig. 20.

Vertical wrinkles are found in the central region of the forehead and sometimes occupy the middle line with a deep furrow, more often they are bilateral and symmetrical, near the inner fourth part of the eyebrow, and sometimes they are placed at different distances from the middle line.

Arched wrinkles extend over the forehead in a series of lines which are usually concentric with the curve of the eyebrows, but are sometimes nearly horizontal.

Orbital wrinkles may lie in a radiating plan all round the outer lower and inner borders of the orbit, and in some persons they are found lying over the curves of the orbicularis muscle itself.
Some Examples.

The variations in the long hairs of men’s eyebrows present some very singular tufts, and I have added below nine figures of certain cases examined and noted by myself, and these are, I hope, plain enough without any more detailed account than is given in the few words describing each.

Unless one’s attention be specially directed to these aberrant hairs, which are extremely common, one would not expect that hairs could be so variously twisted by muscular action beneath them. You may see a tuft of long hair projecting from the plane of the eyebrows towards the inner end, looking like a small horn, and I have measured individual hairs in elderly persons and found many an inch in length and a few an inch and a half. Such a tuft gives a fierce look to the countenance if the hairs are bushy and plentiful. The celebrated Dr. Keate, the flogging Head of Eton, a fiery strenuous person, was noted for the extraordinary long
horn of thick hair in his eyebrows, which he appeared to use as a supplementary finger to point to this or that object of his terrifying attention. You may also see a man with a great drooping curtain of hairs overhanging his eyes, half hiding the upper lids and eyes. Another will show at the outer end of the eyebrows a bristling bush of hairs turning upwards in the aggressive manner of Wilhelm II. of evil memory, or of Mr. Roosevelt in former times. Again the outer points of the eyebrow hairs may turn downwards like a cavalry moustache, or the hairs may stand out at right angles as a level shelf. The fashions of these “orbital moustaches” appear to be as numerous as those of the upper lip.
A Conflict of Forces.

If the eyebrows are studied in the light of the three muscles displayed in Fig. 20 it is seen to contain an interesting congeries of small forces in conflict. (1) The frontalis moves the eyebrow directly upwards. I had a friend once about seventy years old who was a very vigorous, strong-willed man and he spoke with decision and energy. It was most interesting to watch how his frontalis muscle strongly and frequently contracted as he spoke and drew up his eyebrows so that one might, as it were, measure the strength of his expressed convictions by the rate of action of his frontalis muscle! (2) The corrugator draws the skin of the eyebrow inwards to the middle line thus acting at a right angle to the line of the frontalis. (3) The orbicularis in the upper part directly opposes the action of the frontalis and in the lower acts “on its own” in closing the lower lid. This little spot is a Hill 60, destroyed at the battle of Messines, and has been the scene of much fighting throughout life, and it bears abiding witness in the twists and curves of the long hairs to the severity of the struggles. These actions of the three contending muscles are involuntary and of a reflex character, and much employed in such habits as those of knitting the brows or in elevating or depressing them, all this being set going and controlled by cerebral action. Incidentally then the preponderance of one or more of these actions over others, as shown in the hair, is evidence, as far as it goes, of the disposi-tion and character of the possessor. So that between the wrinkles and the twisted hairs of his brow the elderly man, and less so the woman, carries about an engraved statement, for his friends or enemies to read, of his natural disposi-tion and his acquired habits, in a limited field—his written character!



Fig. 20.

Muscles surrounding orbit with lines of action. Left—muscles con-cerned in move-ments of parts round orbits. Right—lines of ac-tion of these muscles in-di-cated by arrows.



Fig. 21.—C. B. ?t 81.

Hairs: Thick and bushy eyebrows. At junc-tion of outer and middle third of each side the thick hairs turn abruptly down-wards in a tuft and cover the upper lid.

Wrinkles: Arched and lateral fairly well-marked, one very deep, cen-tral and ver-ti-cal wrinkle.