For shampooing the hair, urine was the favorite medium among the Eskimo.[61] Sahagun, gives in detail the formula of the preparation applied by the Mexicans for the eradication of dandruff: “Cut the hair close to the root, wash head well with urine, and afterward take amole (soap-weed) and coixochitl leaves—the amole is the wormwood of this country [in this Sahagun is mistaken]—and then the kernels of aguacate ground up and mixed with the ashes already spoken of (wood ashes from the fire-place), and then rub on black mud with a quantity of the bark mentioned (mesquite).”[62] A similar method of dressing the hair, but without urine, prevails among the Indians along the Rio Colorado and in Sonora, Mexico. First, an application is made of a mixture of river mud (“blue mud,” as it is called in Arizona) and pounded mesquite bark. After three days this is removed, and the hair thoroughly washed with water in which the saponaceous roots of the amole have been steeped. The hair is dyed a rich blue-black, and remains soft, smooth, and glossy. Dove-dung was also applied externally in the treatment of baldness.—(Hippocrates, Kuhn, lib. 2, p. 854.) The urine of the foal of an ass was supposed to thicken the hair. (See Pliny, lib. xxviii. cap 11.) Camel’s dung, reduced to ashes and mixed with oil, was said to curl and frizzle the hair (idem, lib. xxviii. cap. 8). The natives of the Nile above Khartoum have “their hair stained red by a plaster of ashes and cow’s urine.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Sir Samuel Baker, p. 39.) And the Shillooks of the west bank make “repeated applications of clay, gum, or dung,” to their hair.—(“Heart of Africa,” Schweinfurth, vol. i. p. 17; idem, the Nueirs, p. 32.) “L’aqua ex stercore distillata fait pousser les cheveux” (Bib. Scat. p. 29), while Schurig (Chylologia, p. 760) says that the same preparation “promotes the growth of the hair and prevents its falling out.” Schurig further says that swallow-dung was of conceded efficacy as a hair-dye, and was applied frequently as an ointment. (Idem, p. 817.) He recommends the use of mouse-dung for scald head and dandruff, and even to excite the growth of the beard. (Idem, p. 823 _et seq._) Ammonia, or, more properly speaking, “the ashes of hartshorn, burnt and applied with wine,” was known to Pliny as a remedy for dandruff. (Pliny, lib. xxviii. cap. 11.) Possibly the use of hartshorn for this purpose sprang from the prior use of urine, from which hartshorn or ammonia was gradually manufactured. For loss of hair, the dung of pigeons, cats, rats, mice, geese, swallows, rabbits, or goats, or human urine, applied externally, were highly recommended by Paullini, in his “Dreck Apothek,” Frankfort, 1696. Cat-dung was highly recommended by Sextus Placitus. AS A MEANS OF WASHING VESSELS.