Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/244

 good) within eight days. But this is a somewhat severe procedure, and would not do to recommend for domestic practice.

Washes of chlorine and chloride of lime, which are often suggested for these discolorations, should be employed cautiously. Even when they do disperse the coloring matter, they nearly always leave the skin of a grayish cast, and seamed with fine wrinkles.

It is only rarely that after any of these "heroic" remedies, as physicians call them, those, we mean, which act violently on the epidermis, the patient can hope for a transparent and handsome skin. The brownness disappears, but a whiteness takes its place, owing to a thickening of the scarf-skin. This is not very noticeable, and is in every respect to be preferred to the blotch, but the fact that such will generally be the result of even the most judicious treatment may as well be known at the outset.

The brown spots called moles are usually brought with us from birth. They deserve no attention except where they are on some conspicuous portion of the body, and thus interfere with comeliness. Some of them are on a level with the neighboring healthy skin, others slightly prominent, and both varieties are apt to be studded with long, coarse hairs. In former ages, when patches were in vogue, they could readily be concealed, or cherished as a natural patch, a "beauty spot," as they are still sometimes called. Now that we