You’re Having A Laugh – Part Thirty Seven
The Kittanning baldness epidemic of 1926
Even at my age I’m blessed with a full head of hair, although it is going a rather distinguished shade of grey at a faster rate than I would have hoped. Fortunately, baldness is not really on my radar screen, but I can imagine the horror when chaps, particularly at the younger end of the age spectrum, realise that the top of their head is beginning to be exposed to public gaze. There, but for the grace of God, go I.
On January 17, 1926 the New York Times ran a story from their correspondent in the Pennsylvanian town of Kittanning which would have put the willies up all young men with a full head of hair. Headlined “mysterious germ makes 300 bald”, its leading sentence reported that “a strange malady, which so far has defied diagnosis by physicians and scalp experts is rapidly denuding the heads of the town’s young men of hair”. A meeting of doctors, it reported, had claimed that they had upwards of 300 men between the ages of 19 and 30 reporting signs of premature baldness.
The cause of the sudden loss of hair was not known, barber’s itch, some form of ringworm or other scalp disease often spread by unsterilized barber’s equipment, was ruled out, and the medics advised the young men not to wear hats, to expose their heads to the rays of the sun, and to apply plenty of elbow grease to their scalps. And there was me thinking that men wore hats because they were bald, not that wearing a hat made them bald.
The story crossed the States and was picked up by the Los Angeles Times which two days later, and acknowledging the New York Times as their source, reported that a “mysterious germ makes 300 bald”. Their take on the hair disaster mirrored their primary source.
But one man’s disaster is another’s opportunity. The town experienced “a great influx of hair tonic salesmen which the widely circulated story has brought about. Manufacturers of sure-cure for baldness and hair restorers have descended in hordes”. So concerned were the town’s authorities that Kittanning would gain a reputation for being known as alopecia-central that they issued a speedy rebuttal of the story. True enough, twelve young men in the town had recently gone to the doctors complaining about losing their hair in patches. The medics weren’t too sure what the cause was and put it down to “a disturbance of nerves at the root of the hair” but, perhaps, was just a surge of testosterone, which can affect hair.
The local newspaper, Simpson’s Daily Leader-Times, duly reported on the phenomenon, stating that 12 young men had suffered this mysterious hair loss. But twelve smacks a bit of a dog bites man story and by the time it had got into the hands of the big dailies, twelve had been inflated to 300 to make a bit more of a story. Who said fake news is a modern phenomenon?
This wasn’t the first time that the New York Times had run a story about an epidemic of hair loss. In its edition of September 15, 1901, its correspondent going by the nom-de-plume of Spectator wrote. “European women who are resident in Japan must live in a state of constant dread. For, according to reports from that country, they may at any time lose that greatly valued possession – their hair”. It went on to report that an epidemic of hair loss was sweeping the country, affecting women and men alike.
Once again, numbers had been greatly exaggerated. There had been a flare-up of secondary syphilis in Japan at the time and one of the consequences, for some sufferers at lease, is patchy baldness. Perhaps this also was the cause of the baldness in Kittanning and everyone was too coy to admit it/ Who knows?
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If you enjoyed this, check out Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
