Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/221

 to retire in confusion, with their faces of a dirty ash color, owing to some stupid servant mismanaging the furnace and allowing the gas to escape.

Another metallic substance, which makes a fine white and is quite harmless, and, indeed, if moderately used, actually beneficial to the skin, is ''precipitated carbonate of zinc''. It is a favorite application in skin diseases, and when parts are chafed, or have slight eruptions, its use will be found healing as well as beautifying. There is no objection to applying it to the most delicate portions, such as the edges of the eyelids, or the nipples when they are tender. With an equal amount of French chalk, it forms a powder highly extolled by some excellent authorities.

If the ambition of beauty had stopped here, we should have had no complaint to make. But no! a more decided color is demanded, a more brilliant tint than nature herself ever grants. To obtain this, recourse is had to those unwholesome metals, lead and mercury. These, in the form of carbonate of lead or flake white, and the mercurial white precipitate, have been, and still are vended for the purpose. They are certain to destroy both beauty and health, and the woman who uses them may think herself lucky if her life too is not imperilled. Moreover, when used, they give as we have said a hue so brilliant, that any observer can see that it is unnatural. Therefore, from a cosmetic as well as a hygienic point of view, they