From Pigeon Dung to Castration: Exotic Hair Loss Treatments

Hair loss has been an issue that bothered humans throughout entire history. Male pattern baldness, also known as androgenic alopecia, has been a problem of “manly men” living in different epochs and in different civilizations, including ancient Egypt, Greece, and, even worse so, modern technological age. Women were not spared from hair issues, either, especially those who were lucky enough to reach the age of menopausal hormonal transition.

In the dawn of human civilization, some four thousand years ago, ancient Egyptians doctors arrived to a solution for baldness. The therapy may seem exotic to us, since it called for the use of the following ingredients: dog’s toes, donkey’s hoofs, dried dates, and the blood derived from a freshly killed gagbu bird!  A brew of these bizarre items had to be massage into the scalp of balding men, which, presumably, guaranteed a fast cure of what was still left on their heads!

Some thousands years later, the father of the medical science Hippocrates invented another way to treat alopecia, which he applied in a vain attempt to heal his own thinning locks. The remedy was made from pigeon droppings mixed with stinging nettle, cumin and horseradish. Since that unusual elixir did not help him much, Hippocrates also investigated other solutions. He noticed that the only sure cure for male baldness was castration, although it certainly seemed like an extremely radical solution.

Interestingly, back in 1995 scientists of the North Carolina’s Duke University confirmed the effectiveness of castration in reversing male-pattern baldness. Moreover, this drastic procedure appeared to be the only sure long-term cure for thinning locks in men, although, for obvious reasons, it did not find commercial application.

In India, where well-groomed, thick hair always signified a considerable pride for both men and women, traditional healers developed a number of techniques to prevent and cure hair loss. Applications of a sophisticated mixture of oils, Aurvedic nutrition that emphasised lots of ghee (clarified cow’s butter) and white rice, as well as vigorous scalp massages, were considered the best preventive measures against baldness. For those who already lost their locks, traditional Indian medicine had a miraculous cure – fresh cow dung that had be placed on bald scalp areas for several hours every day!

In the ancient Roman civilization, Cleopatra was one of those who invented her own way to re-grow damaged hair. Her healing elixir was composed of ground deer bones, horse teeth, and some parts of mice and had to be applied directly onto balding spots. History tells us that this strong remedy was offered to Julius Caesar, but, sadly, had little success.

Another exotic way to restore hair follicles was offered by the 17th century healer Peter Levens. In his famous book The Pathway to Health he described his own approach to treating male baldness, which was built around applications of chicken droppings mixed with potassium-rich ashes. The remedy had to be left on the scalp for a long time, and then washed off. Another treatment included fresh bear fat mixed with walnut laves, which the healer proclaimed as an effective solution to restore “plucked away” hair.

It thus was becoming clear that people demanded a commercially available, easy and effective hair loss cure. Precious snake oils became a popular hair-strengthening elixir since the beginning of the 19th century. Hair tonics of various kind flooded Europe. Just like nowadays, their salesmen claimed that these “miraculous concoctions” were sure remedies to fight baldness in both men and women.

Not only topical applications of strange substances were applied by previous generations of balding sufferers; they also tried enriched teas and wines to help their hair grow faster. The 19th century Queen of England Victoria, for instance, drank quantities of fermented wine with birch sap, in order to manage her own “thinning crisis”.

In Japan, a doctor named Okuda was the first to develop a hair implantation technique. Already in 1939, he was performing hair restoration operations by extracting patches of thick-haired skin and sewing them into bald scalp areas of his patients. Unfortunately, due to a high degree of the country’s isolation from the rest of the world, that hair restoration technique for some time remained only a local invention.

About twenty years later, the procedure was e-invented and popularized in the west, thanks to the works of a New York doctor Norman Orentreich, who established a theory of genetic integrity of transplanted parts from the same donor.

The technique was promising, but, when hairy parts were transplanted, usually to the easily-balding frontal parts of the scalp, there was not much hair left for further rearrangements. That problem was partially solved by researcher Colin Jahoda, who offered a technique of hair transplantation using follicles grown in a culture.

Besides new methods of hair transplantation, other revolutionary therapies have been developed by scientists. They include such effective pharmaceutical medications as Rogaine (Minoxidil) and Propecia (Finasteride). Interestingly, Rogaine was originally designed as a hypertension drug, but patients soon noticed its strong hair-booting effect. Now, Rogaine is recommended to be used topically two times a day, and it is a proven treatment to reverse hormonally-induced baldness in more than 60 percent of cases. Propecia is another promising medication for men that, according to clinical trials, hampers hair loss in almost 85 percent of users and restores initial hair thickness in more than 65 percent of cases.

One more innovation in the field of hair restoration is LLLT, or the low-level laser therapy, which is currently estimated as being 90 percent efficient in inhibiting hair shedding and about 50 percent effective in completely reversing hair loss.

Robin Makris