Archeologists have turned them up on Chinese, Peruvian and Egyptian mummies and at a site in Brazil dating back more than 10,000 years. The ancients managed their lice by suffering through them, combing them out, affectionately picking them off each other's heads, dousing them in oil, or simply shaving.
Ancient Head Lice Treatments
If you became infested with head lice, the Egyptians treated themselves with an aromatic head lice formula made of water, vinegar, oil of cinnamon, oil of rosemary, oil of terebinth.
Many ancient Egyptians had head lice till the day they died — and that is actually how archaeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian lice remedies — through their mummified corpses.
The 1600s – 1700s
In the 1600s, humans started trying different concoctions to rid themselves of the dreaded lice. Parents were told to give their children everything from tomato juice to a drink mix made of vinegar and cheese whey.
Benzyl alcohol lotion, 5% has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of head lice and is considered safe and effective when used as directed. It kills lice but it is not ovicidal. A second treatment is needed 7 days after the first treatment to kill any newly hatched lice before they can produce new eggs.
The British also developed a combination of naphthalene, creosote, and iodoform made into a paste which could be applied to the seams of uniforms with a good result of eliminating lice in just a few hours.
You may never know where your case of lice came from, but it started when either a pregnant louse or two live bugs made their way to your human head through head-to-head contact with another human head hosting an active case. If you just have eggs, then there was at one time one pregnant louse on your head.
While head lice live in your hair and feed on your scalp, body lice usually live in your clothes and bedding. They travel to your skin several times a day to feed on blood. Your clothing seams are the most common places for body lice to lay their eggs (nits).
A person gets head lice because the insects crawl from person to person by direct contact or by sharing items — including combs, brushes and hats — with another person who has head lice. Poor hygiene doesn't cause head lice.
Because the active ingredients have remained the same all these years, new generations of head lice have become immune to them. Once lice become immune, the product no longer works. Scientists call this resistance.
The oldest physical evidence of head lice on a human was a nit found on the hair of a 10,000-year-old body at an archeological site in Brazil. Lice combs have been found in the tombs of Egyptian royalty, and even Cleopatra was said to have solid gold lice combs buried with her.
Over the years, the newer strain of lice has become more resistant to the different toxic chemicals that are used in these OTC treatments. So no matter how strong those treatments are, the lice have the power now to stay stubbornly alive.
Lice and nits can't survive the high heat. It's true that lice and nits can't survive temperatures above 113°F (45°C). This makes them susceptible to any heat source, such as a hairdryer or the plates of a hair straightener.
There are recent studies that show that treatment of lice with heat can be quite effective in killing head lice. Products such as Lousebuster are very effective but even a home hairdryer can successfully treat lice.
Head lice survive less than one or two days if they fall off the scalp and cannot feed. Head lice eggs (nits) cannot hatch and usually die within a week if they do not remain under ideal conditions of heat and humidity similar to those found close to the human scalp.
In existence for basically as long as humans have been around, lice aren't likely to become extinct any time soon. In particular, head lice are very common, and getting them is not an indication of improper hygiene.
In Ancient Egypt, some women removed their public hair through copper razors, flintstones, and a process called “sugaring” in which you heat up water and sugar into a paste-like substance, which was used to remove hair with strips of cloth.
In China, documents from 1200 B.C. indicate they used mercury and arsenic compounds to drive away head lice. It didn't work. By 450 B.C., Egyptians recommended shaving the entire body to eradicate lice, which, while effective, has proved impractical in the succeeding centuries.
There is also evidence for special delousing combs to strip head lice from the hair, and delousing may have been a daily routine for many people living across the Roman Empire.
You can find head lice on the scalp, neck, and ears.
Lice are attracted to the blood they get through your scalp – short, long, clean or dirty.
You can get lice by coming into contact with either lice or their eggs. Lice can't jump or fly. They spread through: Head-to-head or body-to-body contact.
Typically, 10–15 head lice are found. The number of lice often depends on personal hygiene, for example, how often the person bathes, shampoos, or changes and washes his/her clothing.
Not everyone feels lice moving around on their scalp, but some people do. Dr. Garcia says that most of her patients say they “don't feel anything,” but others may get a creepy, tickling sensation as lice move around their head.