Mother's Remedies, Thomas Jefferson Ritter [reading well .TXT] 📗

But after all, there's nothing like good temper and steady nerves to prevent the tell-tale lines.

WRINKLED HANDS.—Wrinkled hands belong to age, and are due to loss of oil in the skin. After washing and wiping them, rub with a little cold cream or olive oil. Rub well into the skin. At night, use the cream or oil freely and put on a pair of old gloves.

Camphor is a good whitening agent for the hands, and a teaspoonful of spirits of camphor beaten into any greasy, cold cream will be beneficial. A piece of the gum camphor melted with the ointment blends more readily. A piece of camphor size of a walnut to two tablespoonfuls of the cream is about right proportions.

RED HANDS AND NOSE.—Sometimes a too tight corset, impeding the circulation of the blood, is responsible for the blemishes; sometimes poor circulation due to poor health. Cold feet may send the blood to the nose. Find out what is the cause and remove it. Local applications are ineffective.

COLD OR FEVER SORES.—These unpleasant afflictions may be cured if taken at the first indication of what is coming—a smarting or burning sensation—by frequent applications of dilute spirits of camphor.

FACE POWDERS.—There are few women who do not at times have occasion to use face powder. A woman once remarked: "It isn't decent not to in summer—one looks so greasy without." There are many face powders on the market, some of which are comparatively harmless, while others are deleterious. The injury done by powder is that it fills the pores, stopping them up and thus clogging the skin. Many powders contain lead or bismuth, both of which are very injurious. Magnesia is drying. Rice powder is most harmless, but does not adhere. The most innocent powder is probably a preparation of French chalk. Weigh a box of powder in your hand before purchasing. If heavy, it doubtless contains lead, and should be refused. Find some powder that agrees with your skin and then buy that brand. Suit the color of the powder to your complexion. Don't use flesh tint if you are sallow, the "outlying regions" of neck and ears betray you.

TO USE POWDER.—Wash the face; rub a little cold cream over it, rubbing it in well, wipe with a dry towel, gently, then apply the powder with a chamois—a clean one. Do not keep it on unnecessarily. Remove by rubbing with the cleansing cream, then wash the face. Never go to bed with powder on your face.

LIQUID WHITENERS.—Avoid these. They are "whitewashes" that wither and wrinkle the skin and make it prematurely old. Almost without exception they contain lead in some form. Constant use may produce a facial paralysis due to lead poisoning. Moreover they deceive no one, and give an unpleasing impression as regards one's good sense.

ROUGE.—Well, don't do it. There may be a few who can have a rouge especially prepared that is the exact tint that harmonizes with the skin, the hair, the eyes, and can apply it so carefully as to look "natural." But ordinarily the deception is evident, and rouge in conjunction with liquid washes and penciled eyes and brows, suggest the aids employed by women of the demi-monde.

If any rouge is used, let it be the "Spanish lady's rouge" or crepons—bits of white woolen crepe dyed with an ammoniacal solution of carmine. These are gently rubbed on the skin to produce the required glow.

THE HAIR.—Beautiful hair is woman's crown of glory. Thousands of the sex wear it unbecomingly. They follow the latest fashion in arrangement without reference to whether it suits the lines of the face and head or otherwise. One should never be satisfied with a front view alone. Study the back, the sides, the lines produced, just as you study the becomingness of a hat from all angles. If a new fashion is unbecoming, either avoid it, or modify it into becomingness if you can. So many women make guys of themselves by a slavish devotion to the freaks of fashion.

CARE OF THE HAIR.—The hair is kept in order by frequent brushings, which excite the natural oil by which it is fed, and by washing it. Dr. Leonard, an authority on the hair, says once a month is as often as the hair needs washing. As a shampoo, he advises yolk of egg, well rubbed into the scalp and roots of the hair, then washed out with tepid water and castile soap. A brisk rubbing with dry towels excites the blood-vessels of the scalp. There is no doubt that this simple shampoo is more beneficial than many new-fangled ones.

The hair should be taken down and well brushed every night, This removes dirt and makes it glossy. Use a brush with bristles as stiff as you can use without irritating the scalp too much, and keep it clean. Don't drag a fine comb through the hair. The proper comb has regular and even teeth, rounded, not sharp. If a tooth becomes split, remove it; it will break the hair. Wire brushes are nothing more or less than combs, and are not as good for the hair as good bristle brushes. Keep combs and brushes clean.

USE OF POMADES.—Hair that is dry and brittle really requires some oleaginous preparation, used in moderation. Yellow vaselin is good. Part the hair and rub it into the scalp with the tips of the fingers. A sufficient amount will find its way to the hair itself to relieve the dryness. Cocoanut oil is also good. Never apply anything of this kind to the hair itself, which is simply made greasy. The benefit should be to the roots. The application of vaselin may be made a couple of days before the monthly washing, or if the hair is very dry, may follow it. Remember not to overdo the matter. It does not follow that because a little is good, more is better.

A specialist on the hair who makes biennial trips abroad to advise himself as to the most recent methods and treatment, in a moment of confidence admitted to a customer that after all pure cold water was as good a hair tonic as he knew of. "Do not wet the hair." he said. "Dip the tips of your fingers in cold water and rub the scalp, wetting it and at the same time massaging it. Do this as faithfully as you would apply a tonic, and in all but certain exceptional cases it will be as beneficial.'

CLIPPING THE HAIR.—It is a good plan to clip the ends of the hair once a month to keep the growth even. If the hair splits, trim to a point above it, as the tendency is for the split to extend further up the hair-shaft.

DANDRUFF.—Dandruff is the scaling off of dead cuticle. In excess, it becomes a disease, forming so thick a scale as to kill the roots of the hair and cause it to fall out. It is rightly called "itch dirt." Cleanliness therefore helps a cure.

An old-fashioned recipe for dandruff calls for five ounces of bay rum, one ounce of olive oil, one ounce tincture of cantharides. Dr. Leonard advises free applications of sweet oil for the purpose of softening the scales, then a washing with warm water and castile soap, or the "green soap" of the pharmacy. If the disease is bad, or obstinate, apply a little oxide of zinc ointment.

WASHING THE HAIR.—One suspects that those who advise washing the hair once a week have more of all eye to the increase of their business than to the welfare of their customers' hair. The egg shampoo has been advised. Use a soap made of vegetable oil if possible. Never rub soap in the hair, and be very careful to rinse thoroughly, to get all the soap out using hot water for washing, then graduating the temperature till the final douche of cold. Do not use ammonia, soda or borax on the hair.

COLOR OF THE HAIR.—Nature has suited the hair to the complexion in every case, and we cannot improve upon her idea of harmony. That is why any attempt to change the color is so unsatisfactory. The "bleached blonde" is always recognizable; so is the woman who dyes her faded locks in vain effort to retain her "youth." As the hair changes by natural processes the complexion changes to match it, so that we never get a chance to improve upon nature's handiwork.

In Elizabethan days, wigs were worn to harmonize or match with the costume. Queen Elizabeth had over eighty. Think of purple hair? Yet some dyes give a purple tinge to the locks.

DYED HAIR.—Dyed hair is a sorry makeshift at best. Far better let nature have her way. There is but one hair-dye that is not positively harmful, this is henna, and its use entails no end of trouble because it must be frequently renewed,—some use it every day.

To prepare the dye, get a quarter pound of henna leaves; to this add two quarts of cold water. Let stand on the back of the range where it will steep slowly for four or five hours. Add three ounces of alcohol and bottle. Apply with a tooth-brush. It gives a sort of reddish-brown color. Women whose hair is prematurely gray often use this, declaring their white hair prevents them from obtaining or holding business positions. But where hair has whitened prematurely there is always a freshness and vitality about eyes and complexion that bespeaks youth.

Physicians strongly deprecate the use of hair dyes. No matter how strenuously the label insists on "absolute harmlessness," the dye relies for its effectiveness upon the presence of lead in some chemical combination. The frequent application of lead to the scalp induces a certain dangerous form of poisoning, which results in paralysis. If "dye you must," pin your faith to henna.

GRAY HAIR.—"The only thing to do with gray hair is to admire it." This is true. Nothing so sets off an aged face like the crown of silver. To color it is a great mistake. There is absolutely no cure for it; the one thing we can do is to make it a beauty. Gray hair is due to the exhaustion of the pigment or coloring cells of the hair, supposed to be occasioned by the lack of a regular supply of blood.

For the progressive whitening of the hair due to the advance of age, curative agents are rarely of any avail, especially if the trouble is hereditary. Not that gray hair and baldness are handed down from father to son, but that the peculiarities of constitution which produce them are inherent in both. Nervousness, neuralgia, a low physical condition, aid the falling and blanching of the hair, and the victim should build up the general system. Preparations of iron and sulphur, taken internally, are supposed to supply certain elements of growth and pigment-forming power to the hair.

A solution of iron for external application to the hair, calls for two drams each of citrate of iron and tincture of nux vomica, and one and one-half ounces each of cocoanut oil and bay rum. It may be mentioned here, that faithfulness in treatment means even more than the tonic applied. To gain any real benefit, one must be persistent in application.

Hair often turns gray "in streaks" to the chagrin of the victim. Or it whitens above the forehead and temples and remains dark at the back. Nothing can be done for this.

Gray hair should be kept scrupulously clean, and requires more frequent washing than hair that holds its color. A very little blueing in the rinsing water gives a purer, clearer white. For this use indigo, not the usual washing fluid which is made of Prussian blue. Five cents worth of indigo will last a lifetime.

A HAIR TONIC.—A lotion Dr. Leonard recommends for the hair, especially where it is coming out calls for two drams tincture cantharides, half an ounce nux vomica, one dram tincture capsicum, one and a half ounces castor oil, and two ounces of cologne. Apply with a bit of sponge twice a day.

A preparation which is tonic in its properties and is also said to darken gray hair, and which certainly contains nothing injurious, calls for one ounce of sage and a pint of boiling water, allowed to stand twenty-four hours in an iron pot, and then filtered through filtering papers.

Digest half an ounce of pine tar in a pint of