Among the diseases of the scalp attention is given to alopecia, dandruff (furfur), tinea caries and various pustular affections, fanus (favus), rima, spidecia, achora, etc.  Caries was a pustular disease, in which bristle-like hairs formed a prominent feature.  Rima was a name applied by the physicians of Salernum to a superfluity of hair.  In addition to these diseases of the scalp, we find also descriptions of gutta rosacea, morphoea and scabies, a fairly extensive dermatology for this early day.  In favus, Gilbert tells us that, after the removal of the pustules, there remain foramina, from which exudes a poisonous substance, resembling honey.  Of course his system of treatment is rich in variety and comprehensiveness.

We may notice here too a few chapters on Toilet or Decorative Medicine, a branch of art to which modern physicians have devoted perhaps too little attention, with the natural result that it has fallen largely into the hands of charlatans of both sexes.  Gilbert’s chapter “De ornatu capillorum” offers the following sensible introduction:  “The adornment of the hair affords to women the important advantages of beauty and convenience; and as women desire to please their husbands, they devote themselves to adornment and protect themselves from the charge of carelessness.  In order, therefore, that our ministry may not be depreciated, and that we may not render ourselves liable to the accusation of ignorance, let us add a few words on the subject of the dressing of the hair and the general care of the person”.

Accordingly Gilbert advises ladies who desire to retain or renew the charms of youth to soften the skin and open its pores by the use of steam baths and careful washing in warm water, followed by drying the surface with the finest cloths (panno mundissimo).  If necessary, superfluous hair is to be removed by suitable depilatories, color to be restored to the pale cheeks by a lotion of chips of Brazil-wood[6] soaked in rose-water and applied with pads of cotton; or, if the face is too red, it may be blanched by the root of the cyclamen (panis porcinus, sowbread) dried in an oven and powdered.  A wealth of remedies for freckles, moles, warts, wrinkles, discolorations and other facial blemishes, with foul breath and fetidity of the armpits, is carefully recorded, and would suffice to establish the fortune of any of our modern specialists in female beauty.  Finally a long chapter entitled “De sophisticatione vulvae” introduces us to a phase of decoration and sophistication which I would fain believe little known or studied in the development of modern civilization, in which we are prone at least to follow the advice of Hamlet, to

  “Assume a virtue, if you have it not.”

At all events, we may congratulate ourselves that the details of these disgusting cess-pools of medical art have disappeared entirely from the pages of our modern text-books.  Even Gilbert considers it advisable to preface this gruesome chapter with a sort of “Caveat emptor” apology to the reader: