it was completely useless but nevertheless a great financial success...

Suffering from Male Pattern Baldness can be a pretty traumatic experience for some men but they are far luckier than previous generations who had to rely on hearsay, myths and old wives tales for information about their hair loss. Even in the twentieth century the amount of completely useless hair loss remedies that found their way onto the market was amazing.

For example in 1905 The Evans Vacuum Cap Company started to sell a special sucking device that was supposed to stimulate the hair on your head and prevent Male Pattern Baldness. Needless to say it was completely useless but nevertheless a great financial success and it appears however that people have short memories, because by 1936 another company based in Cincinnati started to sell an electric scalp vacuumer by the name of X-ER-VAC which was supposed to do the same thing.

If a book were to be written about all of the useless hair loss remedies that have come onto the market over the years it would be an extremely thick book. Travelling salesman the over the years favoured selling hair loss medication because they knew that they would be well out of town before the customers realised that what they had bought was of no use whatsoever.

The first serious hair loss remedy was hair transplant surgery which started in 1952, however it was extremely primitive and it would have been pretty obvious that you had had the surgery. In 1978 the hair loss remedy Minoxidil was accidentally discovered when it was used to help people who suffered from high blood pressure. It took ten years for more research to be done and for the Food & Drug Administration in America to allow its sale.

While Minoxidil is an effective hair loss remedy it is not as effective as the Propecia hair loss drug made by Merck which was also accidentally discovered when it was being tested to help men who suffered from prostrate gland problems. The hair loss effect of Propecia or finasteride as it is known scientifically was first documented in 1990 but it took eight years of further testing and development for the drug to be commercially sold as a hair loss remedy.