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blood-vessels of the scalp, and may lead to headaches, giddiness, 
and even more serious results. The head-dress of our soldiers 
is even more objectionable still. The shako frequently weighs 
from ten to fifteen ounces, whilst the bear- skin hat reaches a 
weight of between two and three pounds. Such head-gear can 
perhaps be borne by courageous men, even under the influence 
of a July sun in this climate, but it becomes insupportable 
in hot climates, especially when long marches have to be 
made. 
A recent physiological writer attributes the more frequent 
baldness among men as compared with women, to the heat 
and compression of the hats that are usually worn. If no 
other form can be devised, and they must be made of the 
unyielding materials employed for their manufacture, they 
should at least be made as light as possible, and instead of 
black they should be white. In hats, as well as in body- 
clothes, white has the advantage of keeping off the heat in 
summer, and keeping in the heat in winter. 
From the head I pass to the neck. If any one will 
attentively consider the structure of the human body, he 
will see that the great veins which carry the blood from the 
interior of the head are placed not very low down in the neck, 
and are easily compressed from the outside. Such compres- 
sion congests the brain, and may produce even effusion on 
the brain. The necks of children are not often compressed 
by collars or other articles of dress, and women generally dress 
their necks with great freedom from constraint. It is amongst 
men that the ridiculous and entirely unnecessary custom of 
clothing the neck has come to be, through fashion, a source of 
serious mischief by compressing the great veins of the neck. 
The habit of fastening the collar tight round the throat, and of 
covering this with a neckcloth or stock, is almost universal 
amongst European and Anglo-American men. It has been 
adopted by the armies of Europe, and has nowhere been 
carried to greater excess than in the English army. One 
object of this arrangement is undoubtedly to keep the head 
up, and this has the advantage of throwing up the chest so as 
to keep the whole body upright over the great centre of sup- 
port, the pelvis. It is however quite worthy of consideration 
as to whether this object could not be much better obtained by 
proper drill, than by an arrangement which endangers the cir- 
culation in the brain, and may be productive of dangerous 
disease. With whatever impunity such strangulation may be 
borne by the young and the vigorous, there can be no question 
as to its disastrous results amongst the feeble and the aged, in 
whom the walls of the blood-vessels of the brain are neces- 
sarily weakened, and which at any time may give way from 
