The treatment of whiskers has changed almost as often as each generation came on the stage. The use of the razor is as old as the history of man. In the book of Isaiah it is written in the twentieth verse of the seventh chapter, “In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor.” Ezekiel, in the first verse of chapter five says, “Take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber’s razor and cause it to pass upon thy head and upon thy beard.” Pliny states that barbers were common in his time, though only a short time before beards were allowed to grow. He also speaks of spider webs, applied with oil and vinegar to cuts received in barber shops, and also speaks of hones and whetstones for sharpening razors. In the time of Adrian beards were again allowed to grow, and so the changes and fashions went on. In the time of Queen Elizabeth the wearing of beards was controlled by law, and it was ordered that no fellow of Lincoln’s Inn should wear a beard of more than two weeks’ growth. The barber’s brush was introduced in modern times. A writer named Stubb, in a work entitled “Anatomy of Abuses,” published about 1550, in speaking of barbers, wrote, “When they came to washing, oh, how gingerly they behave themselves therein. For then shall your mouths be bossed with the lather or some that runneth off the balls, your eyes closed must be anointed therewith also.” In the very beginning of the last century a poetical wag wrote the following lines showing that at that time the face was clean shaved by barbers.
“Strap that razor so keen! strap that razor again!
And Smallpiece will shave em, if he can come at em;
From his stool clad in aprons, he springs up amain
Like a barber refreshed by the smell of pomatum.
From the place where he lay,
He leaps in array
To lather and shave in the face of the day,
He has sworn from pollution our faces to clean
Our cheeks, necks and upper lips, whiskers and chin.”