Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/156

 than the washes often recommended, containing chlorinated lime, which attacks the enamel. The following wash may also be used safely:—

Chlorate of potash     two drachms; Rose-water             six ounces.

Distilled water of any other flavor may be substituted.

Various substances are in vogue to sweeten the breath, and to conceal either its naturally unpleasant odor, or some acquired scent, as of onions, tobacco, spirits, etc. The most elegant are cachous, troches, and lozenges, made chiefly of catechu, charcoal, gum tragacanth, or liquorice, flavored with aromatic essential oils. Cardamom seed, cloves, and allspice, are altogether too vulgar, too commonly seen on fashionable drinking bars, for any lady to have recourse to them. One might, horrible to suggest, suspect her of having been indulging in a little gin-and-water, or some such tipple. Coffee grains, fresh-roasted, have a high reputation for masking completely the scent, either of spirits or of onions, and having little odor of their own. Our observation leads us to believe that this is not undeserved. What we place equal reliance in, is the Canada snakeroot (Asarum Canadense, U. S. P.), a small portion of which can be chewed, or the root powdered and made into a lozenge. It leaves a fresh, cool, pleasant taste, and imparts a faintly spicy aroma to the breath.

If there is a foul stomach, with a taste and odor of