Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/96

 eyes, aim to have them long, regular, silken, and dark. They can do so if they wish.

In the first place, they should see that the lid is healthy, free from minute scales at its margin, not red or everted, with no tendency to be glued to the other lid at rising in the morning. The eyelashes should then be examined one by one, and any which are split, or crooked, or feeble, should be trimmed with a pair of sharp scissors. The base of the lashes should be anointed nightly with a minute quantity of oil of cajuput on the top of a camel's-hair brush, and the examination and trimming repeated every month. If this is judiciously carried out for a few months, the result will be gratifying.

Occasionally one or several of the eyelashes grow inward, irritating the eye and ultimately injuring the sight. The only cure is to have the offending hairs extracted by the tweezers, and if they grow again to cauterize the spot with the point of a fine needle.

The odalisques of the Orient color the eyelashes with a preparation called "Kohol," which is a poisonous salt of antimony, likely to harm the eye, and, therefore, objectionable. A little Indian ink, especially that of Japanese manufacture, dissolved in water and carefully applied, answers the same purpose, and is harmless.

The brilliancy of the eye depends very much on the closeness, length, and hue of the lashes. When skil