My secrets of beauty

THINGS TO DO FOR THE EYES, EARS AND NOSE

AS with all other parts of the body, the beauty of the eyes depends upon their health, and their health depends upon care. The eyes have two arch enemies. They are fatigue and dust. To keep the eyes beautiful one must avoid the one and shun the other.

Do not read too much. I never read at night. Artificial light destroys the luster of the eyes. At night we constantly strain the eyes to get more light, and the strain makes a network of fine lines about the eyes. Never read on the train, no matter how long the journey. It is five days from New York to San Francisco, and many persons make that journey several times a year. But if they have regard for the beauty of their eyes they take no magazines or books on the train with them and they buy none on the way. It is quite as good a mental exercise to spend the time on a railroad journey thinking of what you have read, and of what you have learned in reading the book of life, as to read something new, and it is a thousand times better for the eyes. At its best a railway journey is a severe tax upon the eyes as upon the nerves and the complexion. I spend as much of the time as possible in a reclining position with my eyes closed.

When the journey is at its end I send at once for a solution of adrenalin. The proportions and quantity of the solution I always leave to the druggist. I would not take the responsibility of prescribing the amount for myself, and so will not for another. Adrenalin is derived from the supra-renal glands of animals. A solution of it applied frequently to the eyes rests them after a severe strain. I know of nothing more refreshing and immediately rejuvenating, but I insist that it must be used only after a physician has prescribed, or by the advice of the pharmacist, who will tell you what under the circumstances is a safe solution.

I said I do not read too much. An hour and a half a day, and that at two or three sittings, instead of continuously, is enough. Close study of a printed page is dangerous to the eyes and to other attractive features of a woman’s face.

For the sake of the beauty of the eyes—and there is no greater beauty—I utter now a different warning. If you would have beautiful eyes don’t drink too much. A glass and a half of wine at a meal is enough. A pint of wine a day is all that any woman who wishes to be beautiful should permit herself, and that only if she has been accustomed to drinking wine. Too much drinking makes the eyes bloodshot. It congests the blood vessels in them, causing disfiguring little red streaks in the whites of the eyes. It causes also a congested condition that inflames the lining of the lids.

When the eyes are tired the thing to do is to rest. Go to your room. Loosen your clothes. Lie upon your back and place upon your eyes a hot compress. Make the compress in this way:

One gill rosewater; one gill witch hazel. Heat this mixture and when it is nearly at the boiling point dip into it a bandage of soft linen, or of absorbent cotton, and press this upon the eyes.

Sometimes a friend of mine points to her yellow eyeballs and says: “What shall I do to make them white?” I answer: “You are bilious. You must cleanse the liver and the stomach. A physician or a pharmacist can best tell you how to do this. But if you do not wish to go to either try a semi-fast. Eat only half as much at each meal as you have been doing, and drink water freely. We need three quarts of water a day to keep the body in health. If the system has reached such a condition that the eyeballs are yellow then that quantity should be increased by one-half. Water drinking is a necessity that should become a fixed habit.

Every morning at rising we should drink at least two glassfuls of cold, but not ice water. If the stomach is very delicate it would be better that the water were warm. If cold it should be sipped, not tossed off at a draught, because by the time it reaches the stomach it should be as warm as the lining of the stomach itself, to prevent chilling that important organ. Throughout the day a good deal could be drunk and the remainder should be drunk in a leisurely way at night. It is well under the most ordinary circumstances to drink two or three glasses of water before retiring. For the woman with the yellow eyeballs a half teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda or of pulverized charcoal could be taken to advantage in a glass of the water at morning or night. Also I should advise for this woman exercise out of doors.

For the daily care of the eyes there should be two baths. The body must have its bath. The face must have its cleansing. Why not the eye, especially as the eye, with its thick lid and the fringe of eyelashes, is a dust trap, and the slightest speck of dust allowed to remain beneath the lid may cause inflammation of the lid and irritation of the eye.

For the eye’s daily bath I offer you the choice of several lotions. My favorite is:

Ten ounces purest rosewater. Apply with an eyecup, turning the eyecup upside down so that the half open eye is completely washed by the contents of the cup. Hold it thus for thirty seconds, or, if not uncomfortable, a full minute. Throw away this rosewater. Rinse the glass and give the eye a second bath. If the eyes are irritated the bath can be repeated several times. Ordinarily a bath in the morning on rising and another at night on retiring are enough.

One ounce elderflower water. Some of my friends who have beautiful eyes prefer this to rosewater. It is equally good. Apply it in the same way.

Another excellent eyebath is:

One-half ounce witch hazel; one-half ounce distilled water. Shake well in bottle and apply with an eyecup.

One other bath is excellent:

Six drops boracic acid; one wineglass distilled water. Shake well before applying.

Salt has its advocates. Certainly salt is stimulating to tired eyes, but I would only use it in emergencies. Then once a day, before retiring as follows:

A pinch of salt in an eyecup of cold water. Use with the eyecup. Also bathe the lids with a bit of cotton dipped into the salt water.

A bath of borax water is beneficial and has the advantage of always being convenient. Even while traveling one may carry a box of borax. Futhermore, it is safe, because borax will only form a four per cent. solution, that is, four per cent. of it only will be absorbed by water. A borax bath is strengthening. If the eyes be delicate or the person so prejudiced against experiments that she is not willing to introduce this substance into the eyes, a silk sponge or a soft cloth dipped into borax water and pressed upon the eyelids is efficacious, soothing.

The old fashioned home remedy of cold tea leaves pressed upon the lids has value, not from the tea leaves intrinsically, but from the cool, moist contact. Cloths dipped in water are quite as good.

Whatever reduces the fever and inflammation in eyelids makes for the beauty of the eyes. And here a word of warning. If the lids become granular, that is, if tiny lumps form inside the lining of the eyelid, don’t attempt to cure them yourself. Give yourself over to a physician’s care.

There is nothing more disfiguring or dangerous to the eyes than these irritating little lumps. They are caused by eye strain and if the strain be removed the granules are likely to disappear. If, however, the case is far advanced it needs medical treatment.

As the greatest enemy of the beauty of the eyes is strain, so the greatest friend is rest. If my eyes were losing their brightness I should first of all rest. But rest may be taken, to use the druggist’s phrase, “in small doses.” If I am too much engaged to go into a dark room and rest for days I can at least rest my eyes by taking extra sleep. From the standpoint of beauty every one should retire before twelve, to give the eyes sufficient rest.

And there are twenty chances a day to close the eyes for a few minutes. Say five minutes at a time, and twenty times. There we have one hundred minutes. Those chances can be taken on the Subway, the “L” trains or in the surface cars. Often have I seen a man on a train admire a young woman for the demure, downcast glance of her eye. He thinks that is one of her individual lures. Silly man. The girl doesn’t know he exists. She is merely taking an eye rest. When you are bathing your face, when you are massaging it, when you are brushing your hair, while you are being manicured or pedicured—there are countless opportunities to give the eyes the rest they need. Try it for three days and the results will amaze you.

Never use preparations in or upon the eyes, unless you have them analyzed. Do not count the cost of analysis. What are a few American dollars or French francs or Italian lire compared with beauty!

Never use any toilet article without such analysis. And even after you have used the preparation for a time it is wise to again submit it to another analysis, for when an article has secured its vogue through excellence I am sorry to say that manufacturers oftentimes increase their profits by cheapening the ingredients and adulterating the article.

The surroundings of the eyes are as important as the eyes themselves. Keep lines away from the eyes by keeping them well rested. Also massage lightly about them for four or five minutes. Never longer, because too much massage will tire the exceedingly delicate muscles about the eyes and cause them to sag. Massage them at retiring with any good cold cream.

Rub with light rotary motion, with the tips of the second and third fingers, outward and away from the corners of the eyes. With the same fingers stroke the muscles that lie along the upper edge of the cheekbone. The stroke should be a slow, sweeping one from the lower corner of the eye to the edge of the hair line. Never touch the soft, flabby skin beneath the eyes. It will make wrinkles. A third, valuable stroke is above and along the upper edge of the eyebrows. It is most soothing and restful.

The eyelashes depend for their length and beauty upon the condition of the eyelids. Do not allow them to become inflamed. If they are irritated the lashes will be weakened and will stop growing, or will fall out. To make them grow long and evenly they should be clipped two or three times a year.

If the eyelashes grow thin or unevenly it may be because the eyes are strained and the lids inflamed. To remedy such a condition I recommend either of the following prescriptions:

Rosewater, 1-3 glass; witch hazel, ½ glass. Warm and apply by opening the eye when covered by the glassful of the mixture, thus giving the eye a thorough bath.

Camphor water, 1 ounce; powdered borax, 3 grains; infusion of sassafras-pith, 2 ounces. Apply with an eye-dropper, the glass tube with rubber bulb that can be obtained in any drug store. Apply as frequently as is needed to allay the inflammation.

The growth of the eyelashes can also be promoted by frequent brushing with an eyelash brush, also by carefully clipping the ends twice a year. Brush the lashes upward and the brows toward the temples, training the arch to be high and piquant. For eyebrows that are weak and thin this lotion is excellent and should be applied frequently:

Sulphate of quinine, 10 grains; oil of sweet almonds, 2 ounces.

The eyebrows should be kept clean by brushing with a tiny eyebrow brush. A half dozen strokes upon each eyebrow is enough. The lashes should be brushed upward. That makes them curly. Sometimes eyebrows grow unevenly. They begin well, but end drearily, in a straggling line of sparse hairs or in no hairs at all. Massaging the scant parts of the eyebrow with lanolin will improve them.

Here is a most excellent tonic for the brows, and indeed for the hair. Applied three times a week it will give the hair a fine stimulus toward growth. You can get from the druggist a smaller quantity than I describe but the proportions should be as follows:

Tincture of vanilla, 6 grams; tincture of carnation, 10 grams; Peruvian balsam, O.65 grains; alcohol, 450 grams; oil of bergamot, O.45 grams; oil of lemon, O.90 grams; quinine, 0.40 grams; infusion of civet, O.10 grams; infusion of musk, 0.10 grams.

Sometimes the eyelashes show a bothersome tendency to curve inward, usually on the lower lid. To insure comfort and avoid dangerous irritation of the eyes they should be removed by careful manipulation of hair forceps especially made for the purpose.

Girls often ask me how to make their eyelashes darker. There are dyes or stains for eyelashes, but I do not recommend them. In themselves hair dyes are likely to be injurious. The application of one of them to the eyelashes by an unsteady hand might permanently injure the eyes.

Eyelashes are often too light because they are faded. To restore them to their original color, clipping the ends carefully and slightly every two months may strengthen and stimulate and so darken them. This pomade is in common use in France:

Red vaseline, 1 ounce; tincture of cantharides, ½ dram; oil of lavender, 8 drops; oil of rosemary, 8 drops. Apply with the utmost care so that none of it gets into the eyes.

If your eyelids are encrusted when you wake up in the morning don’t attempt to remove the incrustations until you have moistened them with a lotion from your eye cup. The best one for this purpose is made by dissolving an ounce of boracic acid in a pint of rosewater.

Styes are ugly and disfiguring. In their first stages they can be removed by applying ethereal collodion with a camel’s hair brush. If the condition has progressed far, a tiny flaxseed poultice soon brings it to the “ripe” stage, after which it can be lanced by an ordinary needle, that has been sterilized, by passing it through fire.

If your eyebrows are straggly and uneven, and in places very thin, use an eyebrow brush twice a day. Every morning and evening brush the brows, giving them at least twenty-five strokes each and being careful to brush in the direction you want them to grow. In this way you can do much to cultivate the beautiful arch. It will also remove the dandruff that is likely to accumulate about the eyebrows. Massaging the brows at night with lanolin is also helpful.

The greatest menace to a business girl’s beauty is that of eye strain. The danger that this eye strain will produce wrinkles between her eyebrows, will inflame the lids and cause the eyelashes to fall out, and will dim the brightness of the eyes and produce the tired expression of the old or of those who are devitalized by age or overwork is great.

These tendencies she must balance by greater care than the woman in her home gives to her eyes. Since the strain during business hours is excessive she should not add to that the further strain of reading on trains or by lamplight. This will cause some intellectuals to cry out: “La Cavalieri would empty our girls’ heads.” No, but the purpose of these articles is to reveal beauty secrets, and one of the secrets of beauty is to keep the eyes clear, bright and untired. Therefore, I repeat that the beauty in business must not read on the moving train. Nor must she read by lamplight. The best use she can make of her eyes for beauty’s sake while upon a train is to close them, and her brothers or sisters would better read to her at night.

She can save the strain upon her eyes by closing them for a few seconds at a time several times a day. They as well as her face must have their daily bath, better two daily baths, one in the morning and one in the evening. The baths may be of equal parts of witch hazel and warm water, or of warm water into which a half dozen grains of boric acid have been sprinkled, or a full cupful of rose water.

And the girl who would keep her eyes beautiful must have plenty of sleep. She should sleep at least eight hours a day, more if her system requires it. If she can take a quarter or half an hour’s nap after coming home from business and before her evening meal or before going to the theater or a dance, she will find her tired eyes have regained much of their luster.

Before I finish my advice about the eyes I must not forget to give still another formula which is excellent for bathing them:

Salt, ½ grain; sulphate of zinc, ½ grain; rosewater, 4 ounces. Mix with an equal quantity of water and apply with an eye cup.

The eyes tire most easily in summer and that is when they should be given an extra amount of rest and attention. Rest them from the glare of white country roads by wearing smoked glasses. Rest them by giving up the distractingly becoming but eyes-torturing, crossbarred, myriad dotted veil. Read little. Persuade your beaux, your little sisters or your maids or poor relations to read to you. Close your eyes while you listen. Don’t read in a hammock nor on a lounge. Don’t read on a train. Don’t read in a room dimly lighted “so that it will keep cool.” Rest the tired eyes by plenty of sleep at night and an afternoon nap.

Bathe the eyes night and morning with witch hazel and warm water, mixed in equal parts; or with an ounce of boracic acid in a pint of rose water.

Use an eye cup, turning the eye upward and opening it so that it will be laved by the contents of the cup. When wiping the eyes use a soft cloth, oil linen or silk, and wipe the lids toward, not away, from the nose. This will help to prevent the wrinkles about the eyes, also the wrinkling of the eyelids themselves.

For hot, tired eyes Mme. Recamier used to apply a lotion made by pouring over dried rose leaves a quantity of water of twice their bulk. If the eyes are very inflamed washing them in equal parts of witch hazel and camphor water will be found beneficial.

For granular lids many pastes have been recommended. My advice is to seek out a reliable physician and have the eyes examined and his prescription filled.

A “cold” in the eye is most annoying and liable to be expensive. You get up in the morning, look in the glass, and find that one of your eyes—or maybe both—looks much inflamed. If you do nothing about it, the condition may not pass away for a number of days, and meanwhile you are more or less disabled.

Very possibly, in some alarm, you go to see the oculist. He frightens you at once by telling you that it is “conjunctivitis”—a long word which means simply inflammation of the membrane that covers the eye. He puts some drops in the eye, and tells you to come back the next day. You are finally cured, and the bill comes to $15 or $25.

That is well enough. Perhaps you don’t mind the bill, or the trouble of going to the doctor’s. But it is likely that you would be less satisfied if you knew that you could easily have cured yourself much quicker and without any expense at all.

If you have a “cold” in your eye, you can get rid of it within a few hours by bathing the eye freely and often with a solution made by putting two drops of formaline into a teacupful of water. The formaline you can buy at any drugstore. It may be used with an eye-dropper or an eye-bath—either of which can be had from the drugstore. But it is even more effective to allow somebody else to pour it into the eye by squeezing again and again a rag or piece of cotton saturated with it.

A “cold” in the eye is nothing in the world but a germ infection. Formaline kills the germs. But don’t use formaline in any stronger solution than two drops to the teacupful. If you get it into your eye in a pure state, you might destroy the sight. At the least, you would suffer frightful pain.

Incidentally it may be said that the best eye-water known to oculists for the treatment of sore eyes or lids is made by mixing ten grains of boracic acid and five grains of tannic acid with one drachm of camphor water and enough ordinary water to make a total of one ounce. The ingredients are cheap, purchased from the apothecary, and you can prepare them yourself if you care to.

When not due to over indulgence in alcohol an excessively red nose is usually the result of indigestion or clothing that is too tight. In the first stages of the trouble Parisians bathe the unfortunate feature frequently with this, recommended by Dr. Vigier:

Distilled water, 50 grams; rosewater, 50 grams; tincture of benzoin, 1 gram; sulphate of potassium, 1 gram.

If it has become chronic, this, massaged freely into the affected organ, is recommended by M. Andres-Valdes:

Rectified alcohol, 8 grams; pure glycerine, 8 grams; precipitated chalk, 8 grams; cherry laurel water, 8 grams; precipitate of sulphur, 8 grams.

The ear is the most neglected part of the head. That a pair of ears stand out unduly from the face, making what one of your American artists term the accessories of the face, more prominent than the countenance itself, most parents regard as a wise visitation of Providence, or ignore it. Or if the ears are so jammed against the head that one can not see them without an effort, that, too, is liable to be overlooked by parents, not by anyone else who sees the child who is a victim to the malformation.

Be as careful to frame your child’s face well as you are to frame a picture, so that its colors are best thrown into relief. Some mothers are artists in the matter of the arrangement of the child’s hair, and when this is becomingly done they think their duty done. The ears are neglected.

If they stand out prominently from the head they can be trained, especially in childhood, back into the relation they should bear to the head. An ear harness made of strong cotton tape is made for this purpose and should be worn at night by children or adults who need it. It is far better, of course, to use it in childhood, when the cartilage that forms the outer part of the ear is more plastic, but it is more or less efficacious after you have reached your full growth. It is certainly well worth trying.

If the ear is packed closely against the head train it outward by gentle massage and light pulling, done by yourself. You are the best judge of whether the pulling hurts. If it does, stop. If the ears are less than the normal size they can be enlarged by the same process.

An earache that cannot be quickly relieved by placing loose, warm bandages over it should be brought at once to the doctor’s attention, for a persistent earache is often the forerunner of serious conditions, especially of deafness.

If your ears are delicate, riding in the tunnels may be permanently injurious to them. The greatly increased pressure of air under the rivers is a menace to the eardrum; may cause it to burst and bring about incurable deafness.

You do not know, perhaps, that chronic and severe diseases of the ear often begin in the nose or throat. Wherefore you are taking care of the ear when you keep the throat and the nasal passages free from obstacles. Gargling the throat every morning is a measure for health and cleanliness that no one should neglect. A tablespoonful of salt in a glass of warm water, or a pinch of borax in the same quantity of water, will serve well. But I am inclined to the later belief that no one should douche the nose except by the doctor’s order. The liquid you use for the douche might carry germs of disease into the back of the head and cause a general infection, while they might disappear in the natural way if there were no interference with nature’s plan of carrying away invaders of the head. If the nose is in healthy condition it secretes a pint of liquid every day and is nature’s adequate channel for clearing the head.

But the ear must not be encouraged nor allowed long to “run.” A chronic discharge from the ear is a serious condition and may have a fatal end. Hasten with it to a physician. Life insurance companies, knowing how serious this is, will never insure the lives of persons with running ears.

Doctors generally advise us not to try to remove the wax from the ears. They say that if we let the ear alone the wax will finally form into a hard little ball and drop out without assistance. They advise us not to put cotton into the ears unless specially advised to by a reliable physician, who will never give the advice unless the need is imperative. They forbid poulticing or syringing the ears without special advice, and they are quite right in warning against the indiscriminate use of ear drops. Better regard the inner part of the ear as inviolate. So, too, the outer, except for keeping the folds clean. In the cleaning do not handle the ear roughly. Remove the dust from the folds of the ear with a soft cloth, soap and water. Be careful to immediately and thoroughly dry them. If you leave the neck or hair about the ears wet or chilled the earache or neuralgia that will follow may lead to deafness.

Never box a child’s ears; it may cause a rupture. Do not pull a child’s ears, lest injury follow. Be sure to have the adenoids removed. Adenoids in children are a cause of ear troubles, among many others. Physicians now believe that sea-sickness is due to ear disturbances.