One of the best things about studying history is that it has the potential to make one’s day just a little bit better because The Past had so many shitty components. For instance, there’s a fairly good chance that if you are reading this, you are not dealing with head lice.
Lice are just enough of a scourge in today’s world that learning about its past ubiquity can bring a sense of relief. And lice are an insect species that has evolved along with hominids, so we Homo Sapiens have been dealing with them throughout our existence.
Some of the earliest tools in the human record include combs for delousing: Ancient Egypt (as usual) provides some of the earliest evidence (1500 BCE). The function of a delousing comb can be seen by the way the teeth are so fine, and so close together. The second image from the desert of Judea (2nd c CE) shows another delousing strategy, which was to have double-sides to the comb: one would be with wider teeth to unknot the hair before delousing.
The first image is a super fancy silver comb from the early 1800s from India. You could remove the screwed-in stopper and put perfumed oil to help complete the task of taking the nits out. The opulence of this instrument is a reminder that head lice have afflicted people of all social classes. (The famous Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote a poem about that back in 1786.).
Just a couple lines from Burn’s “To a louse, on seeing one on a Lady’s bonnet at church,”: “Ha! Whare ye gaun, ye crowlan ferlie! Your impudence protects you sairly: I canna say but ye strunt rarely, ower gawze and lace; Tho’ faith, I fear ye dine but sparely, on sic a place. . . . Ye ugly, creepan, blastet wonner, Detested, shunn’d, by saunt an’ sinner, How daur ye set your fit upon her, Sae fine a *Lady*! . . . . “
Source(s): “The louse comb: past and present,” _American Entomologist_, 2018 Fall, by Kosta Mumcuoglu, pp. 164-166.
