Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/167

 decay, your warts will disappear. Owing to our bad success, and to a due respect for the statutes of this commonwealth concerning misprision of felony, we have not recommended it in our practice. We prefer to touch them repeatedly with chromic acid, or tincture of iodine (the colorless tincture, which leaves no unsightly stain, and which it is always best to employ on external parts), or with nitrate of silver. With one or other of these means they are sure to take their departure before long, and, curiously enough, as if they were in some occult sympathy, when one goes they usually all go. Another very efficient means is to treat them to a current of electricity daily. When in very great numbers internal remedies must be employed, for which the family physician should be consulted.

THE NAILS.

The nails should be oval in form, pink in color, with a white crescent at their base, and evenly cut a little below the tip of the finger. They should be frequently cleansed with the nail brush, which should be soft, and not stiff and harsh, as most of them are. The thin skin should be pressed away from their roots so as to display the pearly half moon there situated, and, by thus lengthening the oval of the nail, to give the finger a more tapering appearance. Often, too, this little