THE TREATMENT OF SUNBURN

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7028, 17 January 1910, Page 7

THE TREATMENT OF SUNBURN

Lawn tennis and boating are equally trying to the hands during the .summer months. There arc people who play croquet, golf, and do anything in the matter of athletics excepting, perhaps, swimming, in gloves, and who aire as careful to keep a pair of old gauntlets for garden wear as they are to open a surshade if they cross the lawn so that their complexions may not suffer. It is not easy, however, to consider questions of vanity when in training for the local tournaments in which so many women play nowadays. Gloves, veils, and other details are, after all, out of the picture, and if it were not for the afccr-consequences when civilised visits have to be paid, freckles and sunburn could be left to cure themselves.

A little drill at night is worth a good deal of trouble in the daytime, and after a day spent regardless of gloves out Of doors, some pains should be taken to counteract the effects of the sun. Lemon-iuice and rain-water are excellent for ordinary sunburn. Either the juice may be strained into a bottle and the same quality added of rose "ivater, or plain, undiluted juice may be employed, and the half of a cut lemon kept on the dressing-table and rubbed over the backs of the hands every time they are washed. Jn the case of some *dun<j, lemon'has, however, an irritatm;; effect, and a little borax should be dissolved ft fit of all in the water in which the hards are washed with the juiea of ha'.f a lemon. The hands should be held

in the water for a few moments bo aa to bleach the skin, and if this is rcr,eat> cd night and morning it should prevent it from tanning a deep colour. In some places the water is so hard, that the soan: forms a thick curd. This is bad for tho hands, and it should always be softened with oatmeal powder, enclosed in a bag and squeezed out in. the water, or a little oatmeal may be sprinkled. in together with a few drops of benzoin, which, in itself, is exoollent for making the hands soft and white. Among the many cures in which American women are fond of indulging, where the toilet is concerned, is that of binding slices of raw cucumber on their hands and leaving the juice to dry on. "Wide gloves can be worn, which are slipped on when tho rounds of cucumber have been spread on the Wacks, while in other cases amaid is called upon to bind them over the hands andi round the fingers in aa; business-like a manner as- the pupils at an ambulance class, who are niado to practise bandaging on a dummy. There is no doubt about the fact that cucumber is excellent for tha skin, and without Roing to so much troublo as to be bandaged in a helpless condition for half an homr night and morning, tho juice can be extracted by, stewing slices of cucumber, unpeeled m a very little water, and then straining off the liqiior. A piece of cuounuber in the water-jug has, besides a, softening effect, and a slice can bo out off at intervals and rubbed over the finger-tips and tho backs of the hands. To sleep in gloves is an old-fashioned remedy for which the beautifully white, and soft hands with which our grandmothers are always credited must have depended to a great extent. The best gloves to use are those of chamois leather, perforated so that tho a ; r may circulate freely through them, while they must be at least a size lar-, ger than is usually taken.