As a cosmetic, milk would be harmless, but we doubt its power of improving the skin. As a beverage, no doubt, it whitens the complexion more than any other food.
But before we speak of improving the complexion, it will be well to explain to our readers the nature and properties of the skin.
This is what an American physician has recently told us about it:—
THE SKIN—ITS BEAUTY, USES, CONSTRUCTION, MANAGEMENT, ETC.
Every person knows what the skin is, its external appearance, and its general properties; but there are many of my readers who may not be aware of its peculiar and wonderful construction, its compound character, and its manifold uses. It not merely acts as an organ of sense, and a protection to the surface of the body, but it clothes it, as it were, in a garment of the most delicate texture and of the most surpassing loveliness. In perfect health it is gifted with exquisite sensibility, and while it possesses the softness of velvet, and exhibits the delicate hues of the lily, the carnation, and the rose, it is nevertheless gifted with extraordinary strength and power of resisting external injury, and is not only capable of repairing, but of actually renewing itself. Though unprotected with hair, wool or fur, or with feathers or scales, as with the brute creation, the human skin is furnished with innumerable nerves, which endow it with extreme susceptibility to all the various changes of climate and of weather, and prompt the mind to provide suitable materials, in the shape of clothing, to shield it under all the circumstances in which it can be placed.
The importance of the due exposure of the body to daylight or sunlight cannot be too strongly insisted on. Light and warmth are powerful agents in the economy of our being. The former especially is an operative agent on which health, vigor, and even beauty itself, depend. Withdraw the light of the sun from the organic world, and all its various beings and objects would languish and gradually lose those charms which are now their characteristics. In its absence, the carnation tint leaves the cheek of beauty, the cherry hue of the lips changes to a leaden-purple, the eyes become glassy and expressionless, and the complexion assumes an unnatural, cadaverous appearance that speaks of sickness, night and death. So powerful is daylight, so necessary to our well-being, that even its partial exclusion, or its insufficient admission to our apartments, soon tells its tale in the feeble health, the liability to the attacks of disease, and the pallid features (vacant and sunken, or flabby, pendent and uninviting) of their inmates. Even the aspect of the rooms in which we pass most of our time, and the number and extent of their windows, is perceptible, by the trained eye, in the complexion and features of those that occupy them. So in the vegetable world—the bright and endlessly varied hues of flowers, and their sweet perfumes—even their very production—depend on sunlight. In obscure light plants grow lanky and become pale and feeble. They seldom produce flowers, and uniformly fail to ripen their seeds. In even partial darkness the green hue of their foliage gradually pales and disappears, and new growths, when they appear, are blanched or colorless.
The best method of keeping the skin clean and healthy, by ablution and baths, may here be alluded to. The use of these, and the washing of the skin that forms part of the daily duties of the toilet, appear to be very simple matters, but writers on the subject differ in opinion as to the methods to be followed to render them perfect cleansers of the skin. Some of them regard the use of soap and water applied in the form of lather with the hands, and afterwards thoroughly removed from the skin by copious affusions, rinsing or sluicing with water, or immersion in it, as the best method. This is probably the case when the skin is not materially dirty, or its pores or surface obstructed or loaded with the residual solid matter of the perspiration or its own unctuous exudation and exuviæ. To remove these completely and readily, something more than simple friction with the smooth hand is generally required. In such cases the use of a piece of flannel or serge, doubled and spread across the hand, or of a mitten of the same material, will be most ready and effective. Friction with this—first with soap, and afterwards with water to wash the soap off—will be found to cleanse the skin more thoroughly and quickly than any other method, and, by removing the worn-out portion of its surface, to impart to it a healthy glow and hue that is most refreshing and agreeable. This effect will be increased by wiping and rubbing the surface thoroughly dry with a coarse and moderately rough, but not a stiff, towel, instead of with the fine, smooth diapers which are now so commonly employed. At the bath, the fleshbrush usually provided there will supersede the necessity of using the flannel.
The small black spots and marks frequently observed on the skin in hot weather, particularly on the face, generally arise from the accumulation of the indurated solid matter of the perspiration in its pores. When they assume the form of small pimples (acne punctata), and often when otherwise, they may be removed by strong pressure between the fingers, or between the nails of the opposite fingers, followed by the use of hot, soapy water.
The subsequent daily application of a weak solution of bichloride of mercury—as in the form commonly known as Gowland's lotion—or of sulphate of zinc, will completely remove the swelling, and generally prevent their re-formation.
Eruptions are too well known to need any lengthy description here. They are usually classified, by writers on the subject, into: animalcular eruptions, or those due to the presence of animalcula (minute acari) in the scarfskin, which occasion much irritation, and of which the itch furnishes a well-marked example; papular eruptions, or dry pimples; pustular eruptions, or mattery pimples, of which some forms are popularly known as crusted tetters; scaly eruptions, or dry tetters; and vesicular eruptions, or watery pimples.