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Toilet Preparations: Agents

Remedial Agents. - This term is employed to describe certain ingredients used in toilet preparations which have specific curative properties. Some of the bases already mentioned, notably almonds, fall also under this heading. Among others of especial value may be noted substances which soothe and feed the skin, as the yolk of egg, honey, and cocoa butter; substances which are mildly astringent, as lemon juice, alum, spirits, and benzoin; and other specifics, as glycerin, camphor, and sulphur, whose action varies with dif- TOILET PREPARATIONS ferent persons. These agents are in most cases of a harmless character except when otherwise stated.

Mineral Agents. - The use of mineral drugs in toilet preparations cannot be too earnestly deprecated. In many cases they are immediately harmful, and defeat the very object for which they are intended, as in the case of bismuth, which frequently blackens the skin. All compounds and preparations containing lead in any form are positively dangerous and sometimes give rise to blood poi- These mineral compounds are son. often recommended as heroic remedies, to be tried when other measures have failed; as, for example, for the removal of obstinate freckles, moles, pimples, and similar disfigurements.

They are very common in hair dyes and pomades, and are too often employed under delusion, caused by the misleading statements of friends, beauty doctors, or others, and by publishers of otherwise reputable books.

Two statements we desire to earnestly make and stand by: first, mineral drugs in toilet preparations are dangerous; and, secondly, they are not necessary. The simple and harmless remedies hereinafter given, if patiently and skillfully applied according to directions, will, in due course of time, accomplish the results intended, and develop the most perfect complexion that the individual is capable of.

The use of mineral drugs, on the other hand, whatever the immediate benefits derived from them may appear to be, will in the end defeat its own object by producing after effects ruinous to the complexion, and the last state of the deluded individual who employs them will indeed be worse than the first.