CHAPTER XV.
The Fearful Malady of which no one Dies.—Esprit Odontalgique.—Gray Pastilles.—Important to Smokers.—Mouth Perfumes.—Care of the Breath.—Directions for Bathing.—Perfumes for the Bath.—Bazin’s Pâte.—Quality of Soaps.—Bathing and Anointing the Feet.—Nicety of Stockings.—Delicate Shoe Linings.—Feet of Pauline Bonaparte.
Among the recipes, more or less valuable, which come to light in old collections, one for the toothache, by Boerhaave, is too useful to be lost. Even beauties have the toothache sometimes, especially after going home from the Academy of Music on a snowy night with a tulle scarf folded about their heads, or after sitting with their backs to the window in a half-warmed parlor during a ceremonious call. Use before beauty, mademoiselles; and with no more excuse is proffered the Esprit Odontalgique, which should be kept in the dressing-room, ready for the slightest signs of that most terrible malady, from which nobody dies.
Alcohol of thirty-three degrees, one ounce; camphor, four grains; opium in powder, twenty grains; oil of cloves, eighty drops. The efficacy of this lotion will be seen at a glance, and no other authority for its use is needed than that of the learned and excellent physician who gave it its name.
Very properly follow the gray pastilles for purifying the breath. They do so, not by disguising it, but by reaching the root of the difficulty, arresting decay in the teeth, and neutralizing acidity of the stomach. The mixture is very simple: Chlorate of lime, seven drachms; vanilla sugar, three drachms; gum-arabic, five drachms—to be mixed with warm water to a stiff paste, rolled, and cut into lozenges.
Madame Celnart archly advises all good wives to let their spouses know that these lozenges entirely remove the traces of tobacco in the breath. As a good wife will hardly interfere with a favorite habit of her husband who is fond of smoking, the least any gentleman can do is to render his presence acceptable after the indulgence.
Another pastille, preferable on some accounts to the above, but owing its value to the same principle, is made from chlorate of sodium, twenty-four grains; powdered sugar, one ounce; gum-adraganth, twenty grains; perfumer’s essential oil, two drachms. Powder the chlorate in a glass mortar; put the powder in a cup, and pour in a little water; let it settle, and pour off. Repeat the process three times with fresh water, filtering what is poured off each time, and mix the gum and sugar with it, adding the perfume last.
A gargle for the mouth which combines all the virtues of Eau Angelique, and every other wash of heavenly name, is made of the chlorate of lime in powder, three drachms; distilled water, two ounces. Reduce the chlorate with a glass pestle in a glass mortar, add a third of the water, stir, and pour off, as directed before, till all is added. To this add two ounces of alcohol, in which is dissolved four drops of the volatile oil of roses and four drops of perfumer’s essential oil. Half a teaspoonful of the solution in a wine-glass of water is to be used at a time as a tooth-wash and gargle for the mouth and gums.
With the best intentions as to physical neatness, many persons are unable to make the impression of their company wholly agreeable. They may remember with advantage that rinsing the mouth with this fluid six times a day is not too much pains in order to make themselves acceptable to others. There is no surer passport to esteem than an innocent, taintless person, which wins upon one before moral virtues have time to make their way. If you think this truth is repeated too often, study the impression made by the respectable people you meet for the next month. The result will satisfy you that those who are as neat as white cats are as one to fifteen of the careless, easily satisfied sort.
Slight disorders of the system make themselves known by the sickly odor of the perspiration, quite sensible to others, though the person most interested is the last to become conscious of it. The least care, even in cold weather, for those who would make their physical as sure as their moral purity, is to bathe with hot water and soap twice a week from head to foot. Carbolic toilet soap is the best for common use, as it heals and removes all roughness and “breakings out” not of the gravest sort. Ladies whose rough complexions were a continual mortification have found them entirely cleared by the use of this soap. The slight unpleasant odor of the acid present soon disappears after washing, and it may be overcome by using a few spoonfuls of perfume in the water.
An excellent preparation for bathing is Bacheville’s Eau des Odalisques. The French recommend it highly for frictions, lotions, and baths. It is made in quantity for free use after this recipe: Two pints of alcohol, one of rose-water, half a drachm of Mexican cochineal, four ounces of soluble cream of tartar, five drachms of liquid balsam of Peru, five drachms of dry balsam of the same; vanilla, one drachm; pellitory root, one and a half ounces; storax, one and a half ounces; galanga, one ounce; root of galanga, one and a half ounces; dried orange peel, two drachms; cinnamon, essence of mint, root of Bohemian angelica, and dill seed, each one drachm. Infuse eight days, and filter. For lotions, add one spoonful of this to six of water. It is also useful for freshening the mouth, adding twenty-four drops of it to four teaspoonfuls of tepid water. For diseased gums, double the dose, and gargle with it several times a day.
The Pâte Axérasive of Bazin, the celebrated perfumer, has the distinction of being highly commended by the French Royal Academy of Medicine. It is better for toilet use than soaps which contain so much alkali. Take powder of bitter almonds, eight ounces; oil of the same, twelve ounces; savon vert of the perfumers, eight ounces; spermaceti, four ounces; soap powder, four ounces; cinnabar, two drachms; essence of rose, one drachm. Melt the soap and spermaceti with the oil in a water-bath, add the powder, and mix the whole in a marble mortar. It forms a kind of paste, which softens and whitens the skin better than any soap known.
Make toilet waters and pastes of this kind in quantity, as they improve with age. It costs about one fourth as much to prepare them as to buy the same quantity at the perfumer’s, and one has the advantage of a finer article. Do not use cheap soap for the toilet. Such is almost always made of rancid or half-putrid fat, combined with strong alkalies, which dry and crack the skin, sometimes causing dangerous sores by the poisonous matter they introduce from vile grease. Never allow such soap to touch the flesh of an infant. To do so is little better than absolute cruelty. White soaps are the safest, as they are only made of purified fat.
The feet should be washed every night and morning as regularly as the hands. It preserves their strength and elasticity, and helps to keep their shape. What person of refinement can take any pleasure in looking at her own feet presenting the common appearance of distortion by shoes too tight in the wrong place, and the dry, hardened skin of partial neglect? One’s foot is as proper an object of pride and complacency as a shapely hand. But where in a thousand would a sculptor find one that was a pleasure to contemplate, like that of the Princess Pauline Bonaparte, whose lovely foot was modeled in marble for the delight of all the world who have seen it?
As nice care should be given to feet as to hands, beginning with a bath of fifteen minutes in hot soap and water, followed by scraping with an ivory knife, and rubbing with a ball of sand-stone, which will be found most useful for a dozen toilet purposes. The nails may be left to take care of themselves, with constant bathing and well-fitting shoes, unless they have begun to grow into the flesh, when all to be done is to scrape a groove lengthwise in each corner of the nail. The whole foot should be anointed with purified olive-oil or oil of sweet almonds after such a bath. A pair of stockings should be drawn on at night to preserve the bedclothes from grease-spots. The oil will soak off the old skin, and wear away the scaly tissue about the nails, while it renders the soles as soft and pliant as those of a young child.
A daily change of stockings is as desirable for those who walk out as a fresh handkerchief every morning—but how many people consider it necessary? It may sound audacious to suggest that when laundry-work is an item, a lady would show her ingrain refinement by washing her own Balbriggan hose as truly as by stinting herself to two pair a week on account of washer-women’s bills. As for the vulgarity of wearing colored stockings “because they show dirt less,” it is to be repudiated, save in the case of children, who are quite capable of going through with a box of white stockings in a day, and looking none the cleaner for it at the end. Our bootmakers are in fault about the lining of shoes, which ought to be changeable when soiled. Soiled, indeed! When are common shoes ever clean within? Our manufacturers are the opposite of the French, whose workmen wear fresh linen aprons, and wash their hands every hour, for fear of soiling the white kid linings at which they sew. The time will come when we will find it as shocking to our ideas to wear out a pair of boots without putting in new lining as we think the habits of George the First’s time, when maids of honor went without washing their faces for a week, and people wore out their linen without the aid of a laundress. Cleanliness means health in every case, and a plea must be offered for those neglected members, that only find favor in our eyes by making themselves as diminutive as possible.