Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/249

 REDNESS OF THE SKIN.

Poor Bardolph suffered many a fling from fat Falstaff for his red face and fiery nose, which Sir John averred had saved him a thousand marks in links and torches, walking in the night twixt tavern and tavern. Not many, who are afflicted with this permanent and mortifying redness of the skin, can bear it as philosophically as Bardolph did, though they have it from a far more innocent cause.

Some persons suffer with it particularly in the nose, a situation that gives rise to unpleasant suspicions.

"Where could I have gotten this nose?" exclaimed Madame d'Albret once, in the presence of Matta, a wit of the Court of Louis XIV., a tendency to flushing being visible in that feature.

"At the sideboard, madam," was the prompt suggestion of the wit.

Not only the face, but the hands too, are liable to become suffused with a lasting flush, and not from any inclination to sack and sugar either, though an uncharitable world is ever ready to lend an ear to such a whisper.

Sometimes, as we have remarked, it comes from long exposure to heat, as in cooks, and those much in the sun. More frequently it is a debility of the minute vessels in the skin. Their coats become relaxed, and allow the blood to accumulate in their meshes. The treatment is therefore twofold. The debility must be