Apothecary book offers beauty tips from 19th century

Today’s cosmetics are big bucks business. Just look at store shelves filled with anti-wrinkle creams, hair colorings, dewy blushers, cleansing cloths, eye shadows and moisturizing lip glosses, not to mention products that will remove unwanted hair, and others that restore hair to the balding. There are face lotions that defy the signs of aging, shampoos that build body, polishes that make nails grow, powders that erase pores, pastes that curl lashes.

Advertisements tout creams that tan the skin and others that enlarge the bust. And the mystery ingredients range from natural herbs to vitamins to plain old oatmeal to pomegranates, which purportedly work wonders as skin scrubs.

Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but today’s beauty is beholden to a billion-dollar industry that promises it can turn any ugly duckling into a swan complete with sleek, supple skin without the unsightly feathers.

Yet a look at another shelf – a bookshelf to be exact – may offer some beauty tips lighter on the pocketbook, though, admittedly, heavier on the apothecary. One such book printed in the mid-1800s covers everything from cookery to concocting cologne water, from how to clean corsets to restoring a patient struck by lightning.

It’s called “Compendium of Cookery and Reliable Recipes,” and has an entire section on “Cosmetiques” that follows the more standard directions for such things as larding stewed rabbit or cooking pigeons in jelly.

The only problem is you have to measure in drams, a unit of apothecary weight, equal to 60 grains; or in the U.S. Customary System, an avoirdupois unit equal to 27.344 grains, or 0.0625 ounces. This may prove tricky.

My “Compendium” offers this mixture as a complexion wash: “Put in a vial one dram of benzoin gum in powder, one dram nutmeg oil, six drops of orange-blossom tea, or apple-blossoms put in half-pint of rain-water, and boiled down to one teaspoonful and strained, one pint of sherry wine. Bathe the face morning and night; will remove all flesh worms and freckles, and give a beautiful complexion.” The alternative is to “put one once of powdered gum of benzoin in pint in whiskey; to use, put in water in washbowl till it is milky allowing it to dry without wiping. This is perfectly harmless,” says the book, though it never explains what a flesh worm is.

To make the hair curl, try olive oil, one pound; oil of organun, one dram; oil rosemary, one and one-half drams. (My hair curled at the thought of olive oil in it.)

To remove wrinkles in the skin, melt and stir together one ounce of white wax, two ounces of strained honey and two ounces of juice of lily-bulbs.

To clear a tanned skin, wash with a solution of carbonate of soda and a little lemon juice, then with the juice of unripe grapes. To improve a blotched face, mix three ounces of rose water and one dram of sulphate of zinc. “Wet the face with it, gently dry it and then touch it over with cold cream.”

My favorite is “pearl dentifrice,” which is far less expensive than the tubes of whitener sold at the dentist office. “Prepare one-half pound chalk, two ounces of powdered myrrh, two drams of camphor and two ounces of powdered orris-root. Moisten the camphor with alcohol and mix all together.

Again, this may be tricky. But seems to me, if you can find oil of olay, you can locate some benzoin gum, sulphate of zinc, organum, a little myrrh and, of course, orris-root.