Genre:

Letter, Spoof

Subjects:

Gender, Disease, Zoology, Medical Practitoners

    Addressed to his recent seaside companion, Mrs Smythe, the letter-writer criticises her daughters for wearing 'monstrous' chignons and expresses relief that the girls have now removed these 'hideous' excrescences. Supports his argument with an extract from a a 'clever medical paper' which describes Eduard von Lindemann's continuing investigations into the parasitic bodies found in chignons and other false tresses, animals that eventually 'penetrate into the interior of the human organism' and produce a range of disorders. The letter-writer urges the recipient that they should both 'raise their voices against flaunting of false hair, with all its nasty, noxious, horrors'.