Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/264

 design to apply it on themselves. Suffice it if we assure them that until this means has been fully tried, they should not rest content to carry about such a deformity.

THE PREVENTION AND REMOVAL OF SCARS.

Whenever the face or the hands are cut, burned, or otherwise injured, it is of the utmost importance to see that the least possible scar is left. The parts should be carefully washed with cold water, until they are thoroughly cleaned and no longer bleed, and then the edges brought together very exactly, and fastened with sticking plaster. In large wounds, the care of a surgeon will be necessary to prevent deformity. Burns are peculiarly liable to leave behind them ugly marks, which it is next to impossible to diminish. We must, therefore, aim to conceal them, which, in some instances, can be very satisfactorily done by the method of tattooing with flesh-colored tints, to which we have alluded previously.

What is worse than this about these scars from burns and scalds is the tendency they have to contract, pulling the features and neighboring parts into the most frightfully deformed positions. During the process of healing, the surgeon will overcome this in great measure by elastic straps and proper apparatus. When it has once taken place, the cure is difficult. Still, for the term of a year after the injury, the scar is