Dandruff. We've all seen enough commercials about that minor malady to last a few lifetimes. For those of you who don't know the dictionary definition, dandruff is simply pieces of dead skin shed by your scalp that exit from your head either in a minor flurry of flakes or, in some unfortunate cases, a major blizzard.



In either case, dandruff prevention shampoos have been big business over the years ? and we would like to honor the man who struck the first real blow at dandruff for the first time ever. He was, of course, a barber ? a man who faced too many flakes over his illustrious career and decided action needed to be taken.

His name was Frederick W. Fitch, a barber in Madrid, Iowa, and he himself suffered from chronic dandruff. We're not saying his dandruff was so bad that he flocked his Christmas tree by shaking his head over it, but it was bad.

He studied the problem in medical texts and also analyzed dandruff treatments at the time. His research revealed that most of them actually made the flaking worse ? and that the only way to really go after dandruff was to dissolve the flakes and make them disappear.

So, in 1892, he created ?Fitch's Dandruff Removal Hair Tonic? and put it up for sale. It was an instant sensation that was suddenly a must-have in barbershops and beauty salons across the country. When he turned the tonic into a shampoo, it became so popular that a catchphrase was born in many haircutting emporiums for when things were going well, they'd say, ?Now we're shampooing with Fitch!? Not exactly a phrase that rings a bell nowadays, but apparently, it was the cat's pajamas back in 1910.

Back then, men would only get their hair shampooed every other week at the barbershop. Believe it or not ? grease was definitely the word back then. So Fitch put out a ?wash-at-home? version of his shampoo to try to get guys shampooing every single week. That way, evidently, their hats wouldn't slide off every time they tried to put them on?plus he could sell more shampoo with heavier use.

Fitch's hair products sold incredibly well until after World War II ? then, in 1946, the death blow came to his company. Seems they went a little too far by advertising their anti-dandruff products as being able to remove every trace of dandruff forever. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled that those claims were, in fact, ?very false.? The FTC also stated that dandruff was a normal condition and Fitch was deemed a flake himself for making those claims?even though his tonics and shampoos actually seemed to be effective at alleviating the condition temporarily.

In 1949, he sold the company to Bristol-Myers, who kept the Fitch brand name alive for decades after that. Nowadays, dandruff treatment product companies are a little more careful about how they advertise their benefits.

Copyright (c) 2009 Kennedy's All-American Club