Cosmetics sometimes play tricks with fair skins which are quite mysterious to the unlucky subject. This is the case with the tar and olive ointment named a few chapters ago. Those who find that its application brings out a fearful crop of pimples, and turns the skin yellow, should feel that the ointment has been a friend to them, in detecting a state of the blood that is any thing but safe. People of sedentary habits, who pay little attention to their health, are not aware how vitiated their blood may be for want of sunshine, good food, and exercise. Its torpid current leaves no mark of disease on the surface; humors concentrate in the vital organs, and finally appear in the form of chronic disorders. Consumption leaves the skin clear and brilliant, because the morbid matters which usually pass off through the skin are eating away the life in ulcers beneath. The tar brings them to the surface, and one application sometimes leaves a face in a sorry state. Three ladies of different families tried the recipe at the same time, with frightful results, for the reason that they were all in the state when a dose of blood purifier would have had the same effect. One lady kept on using the lotion, and her face became smooth after trying it three or four times. When people perspire freely, such unhappy effects are seldom noticed. Apropos of this, come a few lines from W. H. H. Murray, the author of the Hand-book of the Adirondacks. A lady who was puzzled by the effect of the cosmetic wrote to him about it, knowing he was familiar with its use in the mountains, and received this merry answer:
“I have had a hearty laugh over your perplexity. All I know is, the mixture was common sailors’ tar and sweet-oil, with the consistency of sirup. Our party, ladies and gentlemen both, have used it freely for years in the woods, and the ladies have always declared that it made their skin as soft as satin. Certain it is, it never caused any rash in their case.”
Delicate, fair-skinned women are the very ones on whom this cosmetic will have the effect of drawing humors to the surface. Heavens! how many of this sort there are in the world—pale, shadowy as porcelain, fragile of bone and tender of skin, about as useful as wish-bones of a Christmas chicken! They have intense souls; it is a pity they have not enough body to hold them. Is there not wit enough in the world to conjure flesh to the bones and strength to the muscles of this great army of weak women?
CHAPTER XX.
Sulphur Baths.—Bleaching Old Faces.—Experiments in Bathing.—Cautions.—Need of Public Baths.—Their Proper Prices.—Method of Giving Sulphur Vapor-baths.—Hot Baths for Hot Weather.—Russian Baths at Home.—Improvements Needed in Public Baths.—What they Should be.—What they Are.—The Russian Vapor-bath.—-After-Sensations.—Brightness and Lightness of Health.—Reverence for the Physical.—Influence of Bathing on the Nerves and Passions.—Necessity of Public Baths.
It is not a little amusing to receive requests for a way to give sulphur vapor-baths to the face alone. Somebody wants a fair complexion, and fancies it may be gained by bleaching the face like an old Leghorn bonnet in a barrel. Aside from the certainty of being choked to death by this method, there is no way of whitening and refining the face by applications to it alone, when the conditions of health are not regarded in other things. Carbolic acid may heal pimples, and glycerine masks soften the skin; but lovely red and white, with lips like currants, and skin like the flesh of young cranberries, can not be had unless the blood is pure. For this it is indispensable that food should be regulated, plenty of exercise and sunshine taken, and all the bodily functions kept in the best order.
The woman who thought she could take the sulphur vapor-bath at home in her own bath-room finds that her experience reads like a chapter from the Danbury News man. A bouquet of burning matches would furnish the perfume inhaled in the process, and the vapor reaching her face, left it pale and brown in spots, as if she had moth patches. That she escaped with hair only partially tinged, and any eyebrows to speak of, is due to Nature’s guardian care, which prompted the struggle for life half a minute sooner than pride was inclined to give up. The fumes lingering about the premises have induced the gravest suspicions on the part of her neighbors. She is inclined to think that, if her face would only turn brown again all over, she would forego her dreams of Parian brow and cheeks like peaches.
A sulphur vapor-bath is a matter of caution, when given by the best of hands. It is not well to take it in the damp, “breaking-up” weather of March, for the bath opens the pores, and catching cold with several grains of sulphur in one’s body is the next thing to salivation by mercury. The consequence is that one feels heavy and aching, the eyes grow weak, and teeth grumble, while latent rheumatic pains wake up to sharp reminder of one’s imprudence. When the weather is warm and settled, these baths are a luxury and medicine combined. They are most effectual purifiers of the system, searching out and removing all waste particles, to leave the skin as new and fair as a baby’s. I have seen old and darkened complexions restored by them in a way that was little short of miraculous. These baths are also of benefit in neuralgia, and deal powerfully with scrofulous affections.
The time is not far distant when every town that owns a public hall will also have its public baths. Before that time comes, physicians ought to moderate the charges for these remedial agents. Outside of our large cities, the cost of taking sulphur vapor-baths is $5 each, and they are given only in series, as prescribed by the judgment or humor of the physician. When will people learn the laws and habits of their own bodies, so that they need not be at the mercy of every specialist who chooses to make money out of their emergencies? For the benefit of outsiders it ought to be said that the charge in the best establishments of New York is not higher than $2 50 for the single bath, and a great reduction from this is common.
The essential difficulty of the sulphur vapor treatment is to keep from the face the powerful fumes, which are dangerous to breathe. For this object the bather enters a wooden box, with a cover that fits the neck. She takes a seat in the box undressed, and the cover is adjusted so that only the head is left out. Cloths or a rubber collar are closely drawn about the neck to prevent the least escape of gas, and a wet sponge is laid on the top of the head, or, what is better, a very wet towel folded turbanwise round the back of it, and over the top, thus cooling the base of the brain, the side arteries, and sensitive upper part. This compress must be frequently wet with cold water during the bath—a precaution which removes the danger of apoplectic seizures by the intense heating of the blood. Steam charged with sulphur is then let into the box by pipes, and in three minutes the perspiration flows as if the luckless victim were melting away. In the best establishments an attendant fans the bather all the time the steam is let on, to cool the head, into which the heated blood rushes in a way that makes the wet towel smoke directly. And this is an attention the patient must insist upon, for faintness or apoplexy may be the alternative.