”A priori, it is difficult to understand how ephelides can originate from the influence of sun and light in the singular form of disseminated spots, since these influences act not only on single points, but uniformly over the whole surface of the skin of the face, hands, etc. The pigmentary changes must appear, therefore, in the form of patches, not of points. Moreover, it is known to every one that, if the skin of the face be directly exposed, even for only a short time, to a rough wind or to intense heat, a tolerably dark bronzing appears, which invades the affected parts uniformly, and not in the form or disseminated, so-called summer-spots (freckles). It was, therefore, only faulty observation on the part of our forefathers which induced them to attribute the ephelides to the influence of light and sun."
But the amount of mischief done by this “faulty observation of our forefathers” is incalculable. To it we owe the universal feminine horror of sunshine, without which it is as impossible for their complexion to have a healthy, love-inspiring aspect, as it is for a plant grown in a cellar to have a healthy green colour. How many women are there who preserve their youthful beauty after twenty-five—the age when they ought to be in full bloom? They owe this early decay partly to their indolence, mental and physical, partly to their habit of shutting out every ray of sunlight from their faces as if it were a rank poison instead of the source of all Health and Beauty. If young ladies would daily exercise their muscles in fresh air and sunshine, they would not need veils to make themselves look younger. Veils may be useful against very rough wind, but otherwise they should be avoided, because they injure the eyesight. Parasols are a necessity on very hot summer afternoons, but “the rest of the year the complexion needs all the sun it can get.”
Were any further argument needed to convince us that the sun has been falsely accused of creating freckles, it would be found in the fact that southern brunette races, though constantly exposed to the sun, are much less liable to them than the yellow and especially the red-haired individuals of the North. Professor Hebra regards freckles as “a freak of Nature rather than as a veritable disease,” and thinks they are “analogous to the piebald appearances met with in the lower animals.” As has just been noted, they exist in winter as well as in summer. All that the summer heat does is to make them visible by making the skin more transparent. As the heat itself causes them to appear any way, it is useless to taboo the direct sunlight as their source.
Inasmuch as freckles appear chiefly among northern races, whose skin has been excessively bleached and weakened in its action by constant indoor life, it seems probable, notwithstanding Dr. Hebra’s opinion, that they are the result of an unhealthy, abnormal action of the pigment-secreting apparatus which exists even in the white skin. If this be so, then proper care of the skin continued for several generations would obliterate them. The reason why country folks are more liable to freckles than their city cousins would then be referable, not to the greater amount of sunlight in the country, but to the rarity of bath-tubs, good soap, and friction-towels. My own observation leads me to believe that freckles are rarer in England than on the continent, and the English are proverbially enamoured of the bath-tub and open-air exercise.
For those who, without any fault of their own, have inherited freckles from their parents, there is this consoling reflection that these blemishes reside in a very superficial layer of the skin, and can therefore be removed. Several methods are known; but as no one should ever use them without medical assistance, they need not be described here (see Hebra’s Treatise, vol. iii.) Any one who wishes to temporarily conceal skin-blemishes may find this citation from Hebra of use: “Perfumers and apothecaries have prepared from time immemorial cosmetics whose chief constituent is talcum venetum, or pulvis aluminis plumosi (Federweiss), which, when rubbed in, in the form of a paste, with water and alcohol, or a salve with lard, or quite dry, as a powder, gives to the skin an agreeable white colour, and does not injure it in the least, even if the use of the cosmetic be continued throughout life.”
It is probable that electricity will play a grand rôle in future as an agent for removing superfluous hairs, freckles, moles, port-wine marks, etc. Much has already been done in this direction, and the only danger is in falling into the hands of an unscrupulous quack. In vol. iii. No. 4 of the Journal of Cutaneous and Venereal Diseases, Dr. Hardaway has an interesting article on this subject.
THE EYES
In one of the Platonic dialogues Sokrates points out the relativity of standards of Beauty. “Is not,” he asks in effect, “the most beautiful ape ugly compared to a maiden? and is not the maiden, in turn, inferior in beauty to a goddess?”
Regarding most of the human features it may be conceded that Sokrates is right in his second question. To find a human forehead, nose, or mouth that could not be improved in some respect, is perhaps impossible. But one feature must be excepted. There are human eyes which no artist with a goddess for a model could make more divine. And of these glorious orbs there are so many, in every country, that one cannot help concluding that Schopenhauer made a great mistake in placing the face, with the eyes, so low down in his list of love-inspiring human qualities. On the contrary, I am convinced that no feminine charm so frequently and so fatally fascinates men as lovely eyes, and that it is for this reason that Sexual Selection has done more to perfect the eyes than any other part of the body.
When Petruchio says of Katharina that “she looks as clear as morning roses newly washed with dew,” he compliments her complexion; but when the Persian poet compares “a violet sparkling with dew” to “the blue eyes of a beautiful girl in tears,” the compliment is to the violet. A woman’s eye is the most beautiful object in the universe; and what made it so is man’s Romantic Love.