More about Beauty

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Beauty skin deep – but we cry for more skin!

Beauty may only be skin deep, but what we do to ourselves to achieve this has often been dangerous. Being beautiful at any price is not exclusive to the NOW culture. In the early years of the 20th century injections of paraffin were used to smooth out wrinkles in the face. By the 1920′s we discovered the error in this treatment. The injections worked for a time. After a period of time the paraffin perfused the face and caused ugly disfigurement. The treatment involved large scale excision of the paraffin infested areas.

Dangerous beauty treatments are not exclusive to the 20th century,. The Greeks and Romans used a depilatory called orpiment to remove body hair. The problem with this treatment was that orpiment contained a high quantity of arsenic. The cheeks were reddened with rouge. This rouge contained cinnabar. Cinnabar is a poisonous salt of mercury. This rouge was easily absorbed into the blood stream. It was more easily absorbed when painted on the lips, as it was often used. Continued use of the product brought arsenic poisoning to the user and to any unborn child of the user. It was also not too beneficial to the kisser of the user.

Facial wrinkles have been a lasting problem of beauty. The Duchess of Newcastle used oil of vitrol to scrub her face. Oil of Vitrol is a substance that is more corrosive than battery acid. Lady Montague used muriatic acid in a ’60 per cent solution’ to carve away the years from her face. This acid is used to clean stain and paint from bricks and masonry.

Beauty preparations and techniques have often been a danger throughout the ages. Ancient Greek ladies used to wear a white cosmetic powder with a dangerous ingredient. The powder contained a very large quantity of lead. The use of this powder frequently led to premature death from lead poisoning.

If ever you need proof that we don’t learn from history you will find it in beauty treatments. In the sixteenth century women used a white paste to beautify and whiten their skin. Any sun that tanned the skin was the sign of a lower class person who must work outdoors. The paste to whiten the skin was called ceruse. like the powder the Greeks used, ceruse also contained a large quantity of lead. The paste not only poisoned the body by lead absorption, but it corroded the skin. The corrosion of the skin required that women use heavier applications of ceruse to cover the excavation of the skin by the lead. This caused absorption of even more lead. It is said that Queen Elizabeth the first was covering her face with nearly 1/2 inch of ceruse near the end of her reign.

In the eighteenth century, arsenic complexion wafers were consumed by women to whiten their complexion. The mechanism by which this worked was by killing off a number of red blood cells. Therefore there was less oxygen transported around the body and the skin was then ‘paler’ in color. Many women died from arsenic poisoning in an attempt to be beautifully pale.

At the same time Signora Toffana’s arsenic based face cream was used in Italy to whiten the face. It was so powerful that it is estimated that 600 husbands of the Italian ladies died by too close a contact with Signora Toffana’s face cream. For nearly 200 years Soliman’s Water was a popular remedy for warts, spots and freckles. Soliman’s Water was made of a sublimate of mercury. It would indeed remove warts and spots. It did so by eroding the skin. It also caused one’s gums to recede and teeth to drop out.

We still have not learned our lessons in beauty. If beauty is only skin deep — we cry for more skin. Today it is fashionable to have a tan. White skin is not desired. It is known that frequent exposure to sun will age, wrinkle and dry the skin. In many cases excess sun exposure will cause cancer.

Sources: The Mammoth Book of Oddities – Frank O’Neil