Old Fashioned Advice for Everyday Hygiene

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Old Fashioned Advice for Everyday Hygiene

 

 

To Clean Teeth

 

Rub the teeth two or three times a day with a very fine powder of red Coral, washing them well with water in which Sal Pranel, is dissolved.

 

To make cream of roses

 

Take one pound of oil of sweet almonds, one ounce of spermaceti, one ounce of white wax, one pint of rose water, and two drachms of Malta rose or nerolet essence. Put the oil, spermaceti, and wax, into a well glazed pipkin, over a clear fire, and when melted, pour in the rose water by degrees, and keep heating, till the compound becomes like pomatum. Now add the essence, and then put the cream into small pots or jars, which must be well covered with pieces of bladder, and soft skin leather.

 

Pearl water for the face

 

Put half a pound of the best Spanish oil soap, scraped very fine, into a gallon of boiling water, stir it well for some time, and let it stand till cold. Add a quart of rectified spirit of wine, and half an ounce of oil of rosemary; stir them again. This compound liquid, when put up in proper phials, in Italy, is called tincture of pearls. It is an excellent cosmetic for removing freckles from the face, and for improving the complexion.

 

Common almond paste

 

To make this paste, take six pounds of fresh al mounds, which blanch and beat in a stone mortar, with a sufficient quantity of rose water. Now add a pound of finely drained honey, and mix the whole well together. This paste, which is exceedingly good for the hands, is to be put into small pots for sale. If this paste gets dry, rub it up on a marble slab with rose water. To prevent this dryness, put about half a teaspoonful of this water on the top of each pot, before tying up.

 

An astringent for the teeth

 

Take of fresh conserve of roses two ounces, the juice of half a sour lemon, a little very rough claret, and six ounces of coral tooth powder. Make them into a paste, which put up in small pots; and if it dry by standing, moisten with lemon juice and wine as before.

 

To prevent the tooth ache

 

Rub well the teeth and gums with a hard toothbrush, using the flowers of sulphur as a tooth powder, every night on going to bed; and if it is done after dinner it will be best: this is an excellent preservative to the teeth, and void of any unpleasant smell.

 

A radical cure for the tooth ache

 

Use as a tooth powder the Spanish snuff called Sibella, and it will clean the teeth as well as any other powder, and totally prevent the tooth-ache; and make a regular practice of washing behind the ears with cold water every morning, the remedy is infallible.

 

To make rose lip salve

 

Put eight ounces of the best olive oil into a wide mouthed bottle, add two ounces of the small parts of alkanet root. Stop up the bottle, and set it in the sun; shake it often, until it be of a beautiful crimson. Now strain the oil off very clear from the roots, and add to it, in a glazed pipkin, three ounces of very fine white wax, and the same quantity of fresh clean mutton suet. Deer suet is too brittle, and also apt to turn yellow. Melt this by a slow fire, and perfume it when taken off, with forty drops of oil of rhodium, or of lavender. When cold put it into small gallipots, or rather whilst in a liquid state.

 

The common way is to make this salve up into small cakes; but in that form the colour is apt to be impaired.

 

This salve never fails to cure chopped or sore lips, if applied pretty freely at bed time, in the course of a day or two at farthest.

 

To sweeten the breath

 

Take two ounces of terra japonica; half an ounce of sugar candy, both in powder. Grind one drachm of the best ambergris with ten grains of pure musk; and dissolve a quarter of an ounce of clean gum tragacanth in two ounces of orange flour water. Mix all together, so as to form a paste, which roll into pieces of the thickness of a straw. Cut these into pieces, and lay them in clean paper. This is an excellent perfume for those whose breath is disagreeable.