Thread: Death by Shaving

My daughters recently went to a museum exhibit an sent the following picture to me.



I looked up Mr. Farley and found the following article:

3 Bizarre Cases of Death by Shaving | Mental Floss

Apparently it was a real problem in New York in 1921, with 34 cases of anthrax and 20 of them caused by shaving brushes.

https://books.google.com/books?id=fu...nthrax&f=false

Hence the need to sanitize razors when sending them to someone else. The tuberculosis virus is particularly nasty and persistent unless the blade is thoroughly sterilized. That’s why barbicide was developed and why today’s barbers use shavettes with disposable blades.

I've understood that most of the problems were from horse hair brushes and horse but leather, back then.
JMO
Sanitize!
~Richard

Originally Posted by DZEC

Hence the need to sanitize razors when sending them to someone else. The tuberculosis virus is particularly nasty and persistent unless the blade is thoroughly sterilized. That’s why barbicide was developed and why today’s barbers use shavettes with disposable blades.

From the center for disease control: "You can only get infected by breathing in TB germs that a person coughs into the air. You cannot get TB from someone’s clothes, drinking glass, eating utensils, handshake, toilet, or other surfaces where a TB patient has been." No mention of straight razors.

TB wasn't the problem it was Anthrax which is spread by spores and the cleaning process used in the 19th Century didn't kill the spores.

That story is part of the infamous Anthrax Scares during that period. Horse was the common man's brush of choice. It was replaced by Boar because of this issue.

Simply as a safety precaution, I am now accepting all horse hair brushes.
Such a selfless gesture could possibly come at great cost to me... but for you guys...
Hay, no big deal.

Originally Posted by MikeT

Simply as a safety precaution, I am now accepting all horse hair brushes.
Such a selfless gesture could possibly come at great cost to me... but for you guys...
Hay, no big deal.

I see what you did there.

Ironically the chin of the lead singer of the heavy metal band Anthrax looks like a badger brush.

Originally Posted by NittanyGator

Ironically the chin of the lead singer of the heavy metal band Anthrax looks like a badger brush.

Yikes, that's something

I work with horses daily eeeeh i shouldn't think too much about this