Victorian doctors prescribed beards for healthy throats.

Bearded man, late 19th century

The well-coiffed men of the Victorian era wore finely tailored suits, trim waistcoats, and fancy statement hats. These men also, in contrast to their generally prim and proper aesthetic, sometimes had truly impressive beards. The Victorian “beard movement,” which started around 1850, was partially about looking manly and rugged — especially after British soldiers came back from the Crimean War unshaven in 1856. But beards were also, according to some medical professionals at the time, a way to ward off disease.

At the time, many doctors endorsed the miasma theory of disease, which (incorrectly) held that illnesses such as Britain’s common cholera outbreaks were caused by bad air. (To be fair, rampant air pollution was making people sick, just not in ways that scientists understood at the time.) Facial hair, some reasoned, could provide a natural filter against breathing in so-called “miasms.”

“[T]he moustache is emphatically nature’s simple respirator, while the hair covering the jaws and throat is intended to afford warmth and protection,” one doctor wrote in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1861. Clergymen and other public speakers were particularly encouraged to have beards to protect their voices.

Beards started losing popularity by the 1880s. Changing standards of masculinity played a role, but the medical justification was also weakening as microbial biology and germ theory took hold. Beards, it turns out, can hold a lot of microbes.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

Mustaches used to be mandatory in the British army.

Most U.S. soldiers have to be clean-shaven while on duty. But for decades in Great Britain, soldiers were forbidden from shaving their upper lips. In the first half of the 19th century, facial hair was increasingly popular for several reasons, including its supposed medical benefits. And in the 1860s, mustaches went from popular to mandatory in the British army. Regulations stated that “moustaches are to be worn, and the chin is to be shaved (except by pioneers, who will wear beards also). Whiskers, when worn, are to be of moderate length.” The regulation fell apart during World War I for a few logistical reasons, including difficulty putting on a gas mask over a mustache.