Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/245

 cannot utilize them in this way, it is best to remove them entirely. If they are small, this can promptly be done by a surgeon with caustic or the knife, but if large, they must be treated in the same manner as other "mothers' marks," as we shall now proceed to explain.

MOTHERS' MARKS.

Some of these, such as the absence of members and deformities, do not come under our present consideration. We shall speak only of those which are upon the skin, usually coloring it a bright red, a brown, or a purple. It has been estimated that one person in each thousand has some spot of this nature on the parts of the body usually exposed. They are known as strawberry, cherry, or raspberry marks, and are caused by an enlargement of the minute bloodvessels in the derma, or true skin.

To remove them, we must destroy these minute vessels, or cause them to shrivel and diminish to their natural size. In some few cases, this can be done by tying the artery which supplies them with blood. Generally this is impossible. Again, there are certain substances which are supposed to act specifically on the cutaneous veins, paralyzing and constricting them. One of these is ergot, another, one of the preparations of bismuth. The scarf-skin can be removed by a blister, and plasters