Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/231

 great numbers under the skin, and hence it is called in medical Latin purpura, the purples.

In any of these maladies, it is worse than useless for persons without medical education to undertake their own cases. We mention them as those in which we shall not suggest home treatment. They demand the services of the professional healer, and are beyond the reach of cosmetic art. Life itself is threatened. But there are many smaller troubles which imperil the charms, for which every woman can be her own prescriber, and these we shall proceed to inform her about.

EXCESSIVE WHITENESS OR PALENESS OF THE SKIN.

A white skin is a boon of Venus, but pallor we associate with sickness and debility, which are nowise akin to personal beauty. It is just as easy for the skin to be too white, as too red or too brown.

Some are troubled with this paleness from childhood, in others it results from failing health. In both cases the blood is at fault. It demands more carbon to form pigment, more iron wherewith to fabricate in nature's wondrous laboratory, the roses that bloom in the cheeks of beauty. For, strange as it may seem, it is these familiar and homely substances, charcoal and iron, which the magic wand of Nature transforms into delicate dyes, and spreads out on the satin skin