BATHS FOR BEAUTY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19379, 31 December 1932, Page 11

BATHS FOR BEAUTY

HISTORIC PRACTICE Since the time of the ancient Romans my lady’s bath has been a good deal more than a mere affair of soap and water. It is a rite—a ceremony dedicated to the goddess of beauty from the Altar of the Bath.

Poppaea, wife of the Emperor Nero, had a marvellous bath made of porphyry. This vessel was filled, not with water, but with asses’ milk and the juice of strawberries.

These ingredients were supposed to have great beautifying properties, and many pounds of strawberries and quarts of milk were used for baths of the empress. With the Middle Ages bathing fell into disrepute.

Even as late as the reign of Le Roi Soleil, in France the bath as an institution was unknown, which probably accounts for the numerous and pungent perfumes and lotions of the period.

Later an interest in the bath was strongly revived, particularly among the famous beauties of the later part of the eighteenth century. They also filled their baths with strawberries. To come to more modern days, during the last decade the simpler method of using scientifically prepared bath salts, which achieve the same result, has taken the place of older and more elaborate schemes for drawing beauty from the bath.