Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/229

 have started a violent opposition to it, and may check or suppress it. But after all, the fashion is a harmless one, and is not irrational. As we have said, it is founded on acknowledged laws of taste, and nothing from a hygienic point of view is to be urged against it. We do not plead for it, but what ground is there for a philippic against it?

DISCOLORATIONS OF THE SKIN.

Leaving these cosmetic arts, which we may call the "tricks of the trade," we pass on to cosmetic science, which occupies itself with the nobler study of remedying and removing those defects which the arts only seek to conceal.

An important branch of it is that which treats of the various discolorations of the skin, all of which detract more or less from beauty. They are well nigh as numerous as the colors of the spectrum, and are of very diverse origin. It may be said of them as Malvolio says of greatness: "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." So some of these beauty-blemishes are born with persons, others are acquired by want of care, and others are forced upon the most careful.

Some of them are peculiar to certain periods of life and physical conditions. Brown patches not unfrequently arise during pregnancy, and disappear after confinement. A red flush, temporary in character, oc