Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1884 — Care of the Skin. [ARTICLE]

Care of the Skin.

'Nothing is more conducive to a clear skin than the moderate use of mild, pure toilet soap and rain, not cistern, water. Cistern water grows hard and limy by standing in cemented reservoirs, and thus becomes scarcely less injurious than originally hard water itself. Pure water, or milk and water, are the cosmetics par excellence; but although all sufficient during perfect health, are most insufficient for the inhabitants of towns, whose health is rarely perfect, assailed as it is by heated rooms, improper diet, and ill-ventilated places of amusement It is, therefore, necessary that art should come to the aid of nature, from whom we expect too much. In the open air, no less than within doors, in walking, at balls, at the theater, the skin becomes charged with impurities, which plain water will not remove. To cleanse and restore it to its freshness nothing is better than the following preparations, used in the place of soap: almond-meal, | 'pound; fine oat-meal, i pound; powdered borax, 1 ounce; mix thoroughly together and use in place of soap. It is a mistaken idea of many people that soap is a mere cleaning compound, and that one kind answers as well as another, Some even pretend to find a latent virtue in common yellow soap,' and declare it more tonic than the mildscented, carefully prepared cake of the perfumer and chemist. When one thinks of the toilet operations of many American farm-houses, the crash rollers, acrid yellow soaps, and hard water of the kitchen sink —common toilet service of the entire family—one ceases to wonder that the brilliant complexions of our rustic belles become, long before middle life, the coarse, yellow, sodden ones of many rustic matrons. Common bar soap contains an amount of alkali, besides rosin and turpentine, enough to ruin any good complexion. If the skin is in such condition that a tonic is needed, if it seem greasy, lax, and as if too loosely overlaid the tissue, or dry from profuse use of powder, wash the face and hands well with warm water, wipe the face dry, then with the bare hand rub on cold cream made Of almond oil—not lard. Do this moderately five or ten minutes, then with a soft tdwel go over the face firmly and wipe it clean. There’ will be no grease .left/ but the oil has both cleansed and qourisflied the skin. Do this everydqy spy a week, and see h<?w fresh and jajj: the complexion will become. It is an old and popular expedient of handsome women to obviate the. dryness and heat of the skin that may exist from any cause, A Parisian compound, nearly like oqr cold cream, used to anoipt the face, consists of: white wax, 30 grammes; oil of sweet almonds, 60 grammes; mutton suet, 30 grammes; starch powder to make a paste.Demorest’s Magazine, . <■ .■■■