In the Victorian Era, Doctors Prescribed Beards to Help Keep Men Healthy

Like all fashion accessories, beards tend to rise and fall in popularity as social ideals shift. Lumberjack-esque millennials followed the metrosexuals of yesteryear much as how, in mid-1800s England, the ideal of the rugged outdoorsman replaced the image of the clean-shaved gentlemen. But as medical historian Alun Withey writes on his blog, the Victorian resurgence of the big, bushy beard had to do with more than just fashion. “By 1850,” writes Withey, “doctors were beginning to encourage men to wear beards as a means of warding off illness.” The idea of beardliness as a medical remedy seems sort of ridculous, but put in context it actually makes a fair bit of sense.