Bad Ideas Deparment: Scientific Finger Combs

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1876

Well. This item is of course lost on me, but the new “wonder-worker comb" somehow did an anti-crushing  something to the scalp and the hair root that promoted/restored and fictionalized hair health. The secret to understanding  it all, evidently, is that "bad scalp" is “crushed thin”.  This is brought about by “HAND pressure”, from  “strong fingers that mash and force the elastic scalp to become thin and such” causing  hair to be “more crowded, flattened”. For some reason the inventor didn’t speculate on whether other sorts of combs did this, or not; it looks as though he/she was targeting only those who combed their hair with their own non-plastic fingers, clearly elucidating this primal contest in a "wonder worker comb" vs. crushing/flattening comb fingers vocabulary.

 The comb with the adjustable fingers “pulls, exercises, stretches, thickens and loosens the scalp as it passes through” (the hair, the scalp?). It makes the scalp “roomy inside”, allowing the extra room that the hair needs “to function”. These hair restorative miracles is the result of the simple use of the comb, providing “complete results all by itself, no wasted efforts…”.

The comb also, it seems, controls dandruff, and improves “thin, Lifeless, Dry-hair (sic)”.
That’s a lot to ask of a piece of plastic.

This  somewhat-scary item is a photographic postcard sent to the Library of Congress as a Copyright Deposit copy--part of the process of securing protection from intellectual theft via American copyright.  One is set to wonder about who--and why--this idea would be stolen. It would make an interesting story about Really Bad Ideas that were appropriated to no good end.

Comments

[Ray Girvan]

That's what comes of using the "German comb"...

German Comb

The four fingers and thumb. “Se pygnoit du pygne d’Almaing” (Rabelais), He combed his hair with his fingers. Oudin, in his Dictionnaire, explains pygne d’Aleman by “los dedos et la dita.” The Germans were the last to adopt periwigs, and while the French were never seen without a comb in one hand, the Germans adjusted their hair by running their fingers through it. 1
“He apparelled himself according to the season, and afterwards combed his head with an Alman comb.”—Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel, book i. 21.
- Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.