Wigs and Insanity?
In the October 1871 issue of The Health Reformer, [1] Ellen White wrote of “hurtful indulgences” that militate against the highest interests and happiness of women. Among these “indulgences” she included wigs that, “covering the base of the brain, heat and excite the spinal nerves centering in the brain.” As a result of “following this deforming fashion,” she said, “many have lost their reason, and become hopelessly insane.” In the context of today’s comfortable wigs, critics tend to ridicule this statement. But Mrs. White was referring to an entirely different product. The wigs she described were “monstrous bunches of curled hair, cotton, seagrass, wool, Spanish moss, and other multitudinous abominations.” [2] One woman said that her chignon generated “an unnatural degree of heat in the back part of the head” and produced “a distracting headache just as long as it was worn.” Another Health Reformer article (quoting from the Marshall Statesman and the Springfield Republican) described
