Whether they promised to cover a bald head with a mop of curls, to rejuvenate greying locks or to produce manly whiskers on the smoothest of chins, hair-related products appear in numerous Victorian and Edwardian adverts. There was a huge choice of potions, lotions, devices and even pills for bringing back a youthful barnet – here are just a few from the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th.

Madame Fox’s Life for the Hair. From The Graphic, 4 March 1882

Foso Hair and Scalp Remedy. From the New York Tribune, 7 January 1906

Wyeth’s Sage and Sulphur Hair Restorer. From the Palestine Herald, Texas, 19 January 1910

Wilson’s Whiskerine. From Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 12 December 1891

Esauline. From the Penny Illustrated Paper, 20 July 1895

Hygienic Vacuum Cap. From Popular Mechanics, December 1909. For more details on this and other vacuum caps, see this previous post: You Needn’t Be Bald.

Australian Women’s Weekly, 17 Jan 1962

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Although I focus on medical advertising here at The Quack Doctor, I do like to feature the occasional beauty product when it catches my eye. I stumbled on this mid-20th-century Australian hair lotion while failing to find something else I was looking for.

Curlypet’s heyday was the 1930s to the 1960s, though it was still around until at least the early 70s. It was sometimes advertised as a setting lotion for ladies hairstyles, but what makes it unusual is that its main targets were children – or rather, their mothers. The advertising set out to persuade mothers that they wanted a curly-haired cherub who would take first prize in baby shows and go on to possess advantages over its straight-haired friends.

My mum remembers having foul-smelling Tweeny Twink perms inflicted upon her in the 1950s by my grandma (I don’t recommend googling Tweeny Twink, by the way), so I wondered if this was something similar, but it appears to have required a lot more perseverance. Six to nine months of use should start to create a permanent change in the way the hair grew.

Curlypet arrived in concentrated form in a tube, and one had to dilute it before rubbing the solution through baby’s straight locks. Unlike with modern hair products, the advertising didn’t go overboard on pseudoscientific claims – but they do creep in occasionally:

[The hair's] curliness then is due to a different and looser construction of the cells in the hair shaft itself. The Curlypet treatment has been perfected by scientific investigators to influence the growth of hair in this way by a process which they know as “osmosis.”

Early Curlypet ads attribute the fashion for curls to the impressive heads of hair sported by Princess Elizabeth and her sister Margaret Rose. One advertorial-style feature presented this before and after picture of young Master Duncan, who appears to have been transformed from a cute little chap into something akin to Beelzebub.

Curlypet created a need by presenting an assumption that the curly-headed child was the epitome of perfection and that mothers would – indeed, should – be unhappy with anything else. In one 1935 testimonial, Mrs. M H. practically signs up her kid for a lifetime of therapy when she announces:

Much to my disappointment, my baby girl was born with straight hair. I used to try and coax it to curl by setting it every day with warm water, but it still remained straight.

Mrs M. H.’s disappointment turn into envy when a friend from Melbourne came over with a beautiful curly-haired four-year-old in tow, but the friend imparted the secret – Curlypet – and little Joan H. soon acquired both a mass of golden ringlets and her mother’s acceptance.

Ambitious parents could even dream of stardom for their Curlypetted young – such children were supposedly in demand in the movie business. According to the product’s promoters, ‘languishing heart-throbbers of eighteen-inch cigarette holders and two-inch eyelashes’ were going out of style, to be replaced in the public’s imagination by ‘something new in the shape of one or two super children’ with ‘the loveliest curly heads of hair.‘

Even at a more local level, Curlypet might increase the tot’s chances of winning prizes, like little Baby Drummond here, who carried off the trophy in the Open Championship at Sydney Baby Show. This ad is from 1938 but Baby Drummond’s example was still being used in 1947, by which time it must have got pretty embarrassing for him (if he were a real person, that is).

Do any of my readers from Australia or New Zealand remember Curlypet? Were you doused in it in your youth and did you end up with a crop of beautiful curls? Are you Baby Drummond or Master Duncan? I would love to hear any reminiscences!

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The pictures in this post are from the wonderful site Australia Trove.

Source: The Pittsburgh Press, 11 March 1923

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Why, when a woman is 30, do her blushes no longer show? How does a skin grow dull and unlovely while the eyes are still clear and sparkling? Science has learned the reason, and – glorious news! – a painless, pleasant way to correct it in 60 minutes!

Count this faded 30-something in! The above quotation is from a full-page advertorial in the Pittsburgh Press, 9 April 1922. The ad was presented as a journalistic report by one William R Durgin, who had supposedly investigated the new miracle product and verified the manufacturer’s claims.

Terradermalax, as it was originally called before the hyphens were added in 1923, was described as a ‘laxative’ for the face – the idea was that it caused the skin to expel all its waste products, clearing the pores of impurities and leaving the complexion as smooth as a child’s. The product name was not just a brand, either – it was presented as the scientific term for the ‘element’ discovered by young English chemist M. J. McGowan.

In a precursor to our modern ‘here comes the science bit’, Durgin revealed that the cause of a dull complexion was occlusia (clogged pores) and he used the following rather vague before-and-after picture to show how Terradermalax transformed the skin.

Oddly, he says ‘this reproduction of a microscopic slide shows the same skin before and after the first application.’ Did the person squeeze their whole face onto a microscope slide, or did someone cut a piece off, examine it, stick it back on for the treatment and then remove it again?

Some ads showed the inventor contemplating his discovery in a dramatic ‘Look, I’m a scientist!’ pose. The writers of the Annual Reports of the Chemical Laboratory of the American Medical Association (1923) compared him to the comedian Harold Lloyd, whose film, Safety Last! came out that year.

The 1922 advertorial stated that McGowan was 31 years old, but had 10 years’ experience as a dermatologist. Annual Reports claimed that he worked ‘in a subordinate capacity in the soap and fertiliser departments of the Chicago stockyards.’

The product’s composition didn’t hold any surprises – the A.M.A.’s analysis showed it to be clay and water, much like other face masks of the time. Where it fell into the realms of quackery was in the claims about miraculous effects and the idea that McGowan had discovered a mysterious new substance. Anyone could buy some kaolin cheaply from a chemist’s shop and make a similar mixture that would have a cleansing effect and give them the chance to sit down and relax for a while – but this wouldn’t have the psychological boost of treating oneself to a potentially miraculous product. As Annual Reports said:

The only thing you will lack is the mental uplift produced by reading the ineffable bosh published by the complexion clay exploiters.

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While some historical quacks and their remedies remain famous, I often find adverts for products that have faded into obscurity. Some were one-hit wonders that only appeared in the papers for a few weeks, while others were well known in their time but don’t have much extant background information associated with them.

There are also ads I haven’t blogged about because they are too similar to those I’ve already covered. They are, however, worth sharing with the world, so over the next couple of weeks I’ll be featuring some of these gems rather than the usual more detailed posts.

First up is Professor Modevi’s Beard Generator, promoted in The Illustrated Police News on 4 April 1885.

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TWENTY YEARS’ SUCCESS.—The only really certain means of growing a beard hitherto discovered is the use of Professor Modevi’s

BEARD GENERATOR

Success guaranteed after four to six weeks’ use, even by young men not above seventeen years of age. Perfectly harmless for the skin. A 5s. bottle, or double-sized 8s. bottle, sent directly on receipt of P.O.O. or stamps for the amount. Only to be had genuine of GIOVANNI BORGHI, Manufacturer of Eau-de-Cologne and Perfumery, Cologne-on-the-Rhine, Germany.

Source: Black & White, 19 March 1904

Chief among the ills to which flesh is heir in the springtime is the provoking habit of our ‘crowning glory’ to come off in handfuls, leaving us with the parlous prospect of a denuded poll.

So says a 1904 advertorial recommending Capsuloids as a hair restorer. I’m not sure to what extent people really moult in the springtime, but if did you found yourself shedding, Capsuloids were there to help.

The product started life as a general tonic. Launched in 1897 under the name ‘Dr Campbell’s Red Blood Forming Capsuloids,’ it had a wide remit:

…kill disease germs, cure chronic ailments and diseases, restore colour, health and strength, cure all irregularities, and generally build up the heart and nervous system.

Only after the turn of the 20th century did the company rebrand the product as a cure for baldness and grey hair.

Capsuloids were teardrop-shaped gelatine capsules containing a mixture of haemoglobin, olive oil, oleic acid, balsam of Peru and purified storax. The Capsuloids Company formulated the contents themselves then sent them to a manufacturing chemist, Duncan Flockhart & Co., who made the gelatine capsules and filled them with the mixture. This business relationship went through a rocky patch in 1912, when a batch of the capsules went mouldy and the Capsuloid Company tried to claim £8000 damages from the chemists. After a 19-day hearing, the courts ruled that Duncan Flockhart & Co were not at fault.

Unlike most hair restorers and dyes, Capsuloids were to be taken orally. Adverts used an illustration of a hair follicle (the one above is quite simple but there were much more detailed versions too) and pointed out that any preparations rubbed onto the scalp could not possibly reach that far into the skin. Instead, the remedy would work through the bloodstream, killing off germs surrounding the hair follicle and allowing it to get the nourishment it needed. Earlier advertising stated:

This natural iron has been extracted from the blood of carefully selected healthy bullocks, redissolved and enclosed in a gelatine covering.

Perhaps, however, this was distasteful to some, for later pamphlets emphasised that the capsules didn’t contain any actual blood or germs, just haemoglobin. In response to criticism made ‘through ignorance or self-interest’, the pamphlets also reassured women that Capsuloids would not give them facial hair:

It would require miraculous powers to make the small fine hairs on a lady’s face grow to a greater length or size than that intended by Nature. A miracle is an act which is directly contrary to Nature.

Capsuloids adverts usually incorporated a testimonial along with a picture of a satisfied customer. There are a few examples below but there were loads – a run of ads in one newspaper would use a different portrait every time. These were drawn from photographs – I’ve seen some of the originals and they are good likenesses.

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Imitators tried to promote similar products with less catchy names such as ‘Capsulated Haemoglobin Ovals for the Hair’ and ‘Soluble Capsules of Haemoglobin’ but the Capsuloid Company gave them short shrift:

BY TAKING CAPSULOIDS you will wear luxuriant, natural HAIR.
BY TAKING IMITATIONS you will wear A WIG.

DELICACY of Complexion.—The incomparable BLOOM of NINON DE L’ENCLOS, superior to any thing yet discovered for rendering the skin soft, smooth, and beautiful in the extreme. Its wonderful effects in removing freckles, morphews, worms, &c. justly entitle it to that preference so long bestowed on it by the most elegant beauties in this kingdom. It is particularly recommended for the hands and arms, bestowing on them a delicacy and whiteness, superior to any thing vended for similar purposes.—Sold only by Mr. Golding, 42, Cornhill; Mr. Overton, 47, Bond-street; Mr. Wright, Wade’s Passage, Bath; and Miss Grigson, Liverpool; in bottles 4s. each.

Source: The Times, 20 June 1805

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The story behind the Bloom suggested it had been introduced to Britain in 1782 by Mademoiselle Louisa Pigout of Paris, who appointed London agents to reach the British market. She credited the product for the beauty of famed 17th-century writer and courtesan Anne (nicknamed Ninon) de L’Enclos, who had handed down the recipe. Another of Pigout’s claims was that the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, would use no other cosmetic.

A 1784 advert gave detailed instructions for use:

Let the skin be thoroughly cleansed with Almond Washball, or oatmeal. Being wiped perfectly dry, shake the bottle exceeding well, and immediately pour a little of the fluid into a cup, and with a fine cloth rub it on the skin, more or less, as you please, till it is quite absorbed. Lastly, gently wipe the face with a soft flannel. Two or three bottles, and frequently less, will evince the pre-eminence of its virtues, beyond the possibility of a doubt.

If Ninon (right) really employed this preparation, she did well to survive to the age of 84. It comprised almond emulsion, essence of lavender and white lead.

White lead (lead carbonate) had been used in cosmetics since antiquity. In Ninon’s time and well into the 18th century it commonly took the form of ceruse – a mixture of the compound with vinegar. In 1756, Adam Fitz-Adam’s periodical The World noted that women who used ceruse

doe quickly become withered and grey-headed, because this doth so mightily dry up the natural moysture of their flesh: and if any give not credit to my report let them but observe such as have used it, and I doubt not but they will easyly be satisfied.

This was positively complimentary compared with Fitz-Adam’s description of women who used corrosive sublimate, but I’ll keep that for another time. In 1786 a correspondent to the Daily Universal Register (the forerunner of The Times) was equally disapproving of cosmetics in this satirical ‘receipt for making a fashionable lady’:

…viz. two pounds of cork, five yards of whalebone, one pound of hair, six pounds of wool or cotton, two drams of white lead, and half a dram of rouge—these, with a proper quantity of bones for the skeleton, and flesh and blood for the muscles, with the skin of a mouse for eye brows, a pound of powder, and half a pound of pomatum, will compleat the business.

The Monthly Gazette of Health – a publication I am very fond of but accept as rather subjective – estimated the cost of ingredients for a bottle of  ‘Bloom’ as 1d, and surmised that it was made in London, not Paris.

‘Bloom of Ninon,’ was the name of a Victorian face powder too, but this was a completely different product, consisting of precipitated chalk, talc, bismuth subcarbonate, zinc oxide and starch, perfumed with orris and rose essences. The use of lead cosmetics, however, continued throughout the 19th century, particularly in the theatre. In the 1850s, a writer in the Medical Times and Gazette described the case of a clown suffering from colic as a result of using lead carbonate mixed in lard. On his recovery he planned to continue using it because nothing else would create the desired whitening effect, but was eventually persuaded to convert to zinc oxide.

Medical jurisprudence writer Alfred S. Taylor described the symptoms of chronic lead poisoning as follows:

There is first pain, with a sense of sinking commonly in or about the region of the umbilicus. Next to pain there is obstinate constipation, retraction of the abdominal parietes, loss of appetite, thirst, foetid odour of the breath, and general emaciation. The skin acquires a yellowish or earthy colour, and the patient experiences a saccharine, styptic, or astringent taste in the mouth. A symptom of a peculiar nature has been pointed out by the late Dr. Burton and others (Med. Gaz. xxv. 687), namely, blueness of the edges of the gums, where these join the bodies of the teeth : the teeth are of a brownish colour.

Although the idea of historical ladies sacrificing their lives to vanity makes a good story, confirmed cases of death by cosmetics were few and far between. Reported instances of lead poisoning usually involved accidental ingestion via contaminated foodstuffs or water, or prolonged exposure to lead in the trades of house-painting and colour grinding – the symptoms of chronic poisoning were commonly known as painter’s colic.

Even so, it was not a great idea to put lead on your face. As the Monthly Gazette said of the Bloom of Ninon in 1819:

The repeated application of lead to the skin of the face, instead of animating the countenance, would assuredly, by paralysing the nerves, render it inanimate.

Therefore, it was nothing like any beauty treatments that are available today.

NOSE MACHINE.—This is a simple successful contrivance which, applied to the nose for an hour daily, so directs the soft cartilage of which the member consists, that an ill-formed nose is quickly shaped to perfection. Any one can use them, and without pain. Price 10s. 6d., sent carriage free.—ALEX. ROSS, 248 High Holborn, London. Pamphlet sent for two stamps.

Source: The Examiner (London) 10 Feb 1872

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This intriguing contraption arrived on the scene in late 1871. Alexander Ross was a perfumer who branched out into a wide range of beauty products, including depilatories, hair curling fluid, complexion pills and skin tightening lotion, but was perhaps best known for his Spanish Fly hair restorer. On the launch of the nose machine, I suspect he sent out a pamphlet to the press. The novelty certainly attracted plenty of tongue-in-cheek comment.

The Birmingham Daily Post joked that the machine could provide political conspirators with the means of becoming masters of disguise. Once the device was well-known, they predicted,

…we shall expect to have fashions in noses as well as in hair. Where will it stop? Who knows?

The Pall Mall Gazette also wondered where the quest for perfection would end. With noses sorted out, would fashion next turn its attention to the eyes?

The substitution of coloured glass (of the hue best suited to the complexion of the wearer) for these organs is probably merely a question of time, and awaits only the solution of a few optical difficulties involved in the change. When this final conquest has been achieved, we shall at last be able to walk abroad with the proud consciousness that we owe our personal attractions not to the blind bounty of nature but to our own good taste and decorative skill.

News of the invention immediately reached the US too, with one Pennsylvania paper commenting:

Now let this genius invent a “nose machine” that will prevent persons from sticking their noses into other people’s business, and his fortune is guaranteed.

All good fun, but Punch ran a rather more sinister joke suggesting that Jewish people converting to Christianity could have their noses converted too.

Ross was a prolific advertiser, but the adverts themselves remained brief and low-key, without any typographical virtuosity, and often the nose machine was only mentioned as part of a list of his other products. It doesn’t appear to have gained much credence, remaining a last resort for the nasally challenged and an entertaining curiosity to others. In the mid-1890s, the Hampshire Chronicle remarked on it as if it had just been invented, giving a description as follows:

It is nothing but a little wooden clamp, consisting of two thin boomerang-shaped bits of boxwood, measuring about 3in, by ½in. and held together by two fly-headed screws. The nose is put in the clamp, tilted or hooked to the requisite form, and then the screws are tightened… …The whole apparatus could easily be turned out wholesale for threepence or less.

By this time Ross Jnr. had also come up with a similar contrivance for changing the shape of the chin, and one for correcting sticking-out ears. In the early 20th century the idea took off to a greater extent, with new versions being produced, such as this one from US inventor Ignatius Nathaniel Soares (please note this is a 1905 invention, and not what Alexander Ross’s machine would have looked like):

A lot of the remedies I feature on The Quack Doctor are mildly amusing. I know some people link to them as examples of what our credulous old-timey forefathers would believe in. But this one, like the majority of stuff on the site, has a modern equivalent (thanks to Gizmodo for the link), not to mention the widespread availability of rhinoplasty. People’s desire to improve their appearance is timeless.

In a testimonial included in another Empress Josephine Toilet Co. advert, “Mrs Jos. C. Morton” wrote:

Some years ago I ruined my skin and complexion by the use of worthless face powders. Pimples would raise up in large lumps all over my face. They oft times resembled more closely a boil than a pimple. Modesty and sensitiveness of my condition banished me entirely from my friends, and I also felt that my husband was really ashamed of me…

Fortunately for marital harmony, Mrs Morton grasped the “golden cord of hope” that was Empress Josephine Face Cream, and was entirely cured, making her shallow wastrel of a husband “more proud of [her] than ever.” (Newark Daily Advocate, Ohio, 5/7/1893)

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BEAUTIFUL
WOMEN
OF PARIS

Have been using Empress Josephine Face Bleach, Cream and Soap for more than one hundred years to protect and preserve their pretty complexions. The
EMPRESS JOSEPHINE
FACE BLEACH
is positively guaranteed to be an effectual, pleasant and permanent cure for the following blemishes of the skin:
Freckles, Pimples, Moth Patches, Blotches, Extreme Redness, Eczema, Acne, Excessive Oiliness, Tan, Sallowness, Brown Spots, Blackheads and Roughness. Money refunded whenever it fails to do as represented.
CUT THIS OUT
———————–
DEAR MADAM. —This ticket
entitles you to a cake of
Empress Josephine Face
Soap free of charge, with
your first purchase of a
bottle of Empress Joseph-
ine Face Bleach.
JOHN F. COULSON, 804 Market St.
H.C. PURCELL, 821 Fourth St.
J. L. HANSON, 528 Broadway.

Source: The Logansport Journal, Indiana, 14 June 1893

The Empress Josephine range was one of many cosmetic brands designed to give women that fashionable Victorian pallor. Others included Madame Ruppert’s Face Bleach, Mrs Graham’s Face Bleach, Malvina Cream and Lotion, the Royal Face Bleach and Hagan’s Magnolia Balm. A variety of dangerous ingredients formed the basis for such skin products, the main ones being lead carbonate, zinc oxide and corrosive sublimate (mercuric chloride). These could be absorbed through the skin, causing a wide variety of unpleasant physical, psychological and neurological  side-effects – for example,  death.

Harriet Hubbard Ayer, proprietor of unguents called the “Recamier Balm” and “Recamier Moth and Freckle Lotion” gave a recipe for face bleach in her Complete and Authentic Treatise on the Laws of Health and Beauty (1899). She suggested a solution of bichloride of mercury with glycerine, but in the quantities given it was luckily ‘not strong enough to blister the face in average cases.’ Good news for the average among us. Ayer helpfully warned:

Do not forget that bichloride of mercury is a powerful poison and should be kept out of reach of children and ignorant persons.

Which was all very well, but what if the ignorant persons were really tall?

‘Dr MacKenzie’ was one of several brand names attached to arsenic products – similar ‘wafers’ (pills) were sold under the names Dr Simms, Dr Rose and Dr Campbell.

The wafers made the skin fashionably pale by destroying red blood cells. Although it was possible to build up a tolerance for arsenic by taking regular small amounts, it is no surprise that the cosmetic use of the substance did not always end happily.

In July 1880 the Indianapolis Sentinel reported the case of ‘a young lady, handsome and intelligent,’ who had gradually lost her sight as a result of taking arsenic. Her engagement to a ‘young physician of good prospects’ was on hold while he waited to find out if her sight could be restored.

Deaths also occurred, such as that of 18-year-old Hildegarde Walton of St Louis, who died in 1911 having taken several boxes of wafers in an attempt to clear up a skin complaint.

THE SECRET
ONE BOX
of Dr. MACKENZIE’S IMPROVED HARMLESS ARSENIC COMPLEXION WAFERS will produce the most lovely complexion that the imagination could desire, clear, fresh, free from blotch, blemish, coarseness, redness, freckles, or pimples. Post free for 4s. 6d. ; half boxes, 2s. 9d.— S. HARVEY, 5, Denman St., London Bridge, S. E. Use Dr. MacKenzie’s ARSENICAL TOILET SOAP 1s. per Tablet; No. 2, unscented, 6d. per Tablet. Made from Purest Ingredients, and Absolutely Harmless.
BEWARE OF THE MANY IMITATIONS. Have Dr. Mackenzie’s or none.

MacKenzies’s was the British version, while the main US brand was Dr Campbell’s Safe Arsenic Wafers, which the proprietor supposedly used to cure his own sallow complexion. Until the age of 19, he ‘was the possessor of a remarkably clear skin and bright English complexion, so much so as to excite comment among my fellow college students, who used to say “they wished I were a girl.”‘ Yellow fever put paid to this excitement, and Dr Campbell ended up ‘a far deeper yellow than Oscar Wilde’s favourite sunflower.’ (New York Times, 10 April 1887)

After experimenting unsuccessfully with various arsenic products, he developed his brand of wafers and apparently regained his pale skin – thus inspired to help others, he began advertising to the public. The wafers were still around as late as the 1920s.

Sources: Dr MacKenzie’s Arsenic Wafers from The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times (London) 7 March 1896. Dr Campbell’s Arsenic Wafers from The World (New York) 25 Feb 1894

This double advert shows only a fraction of the cosmetics range sold by Alexander Ross. He sold several products for the hair, including his famous Cantharides (Spanish Fly) Oil for curing baldness, and Golden Hair wash that turned the hair “a golden colour after a few usings.” Other products included a Skin Tightener liquid for removing wrinkles, a Vegetable Skin Pill, Chiropo for the cure of corns and the Hair Destroyer depilatory. The most intriguing part of this advert, however, is only mentioned in passing – the Nose Machine.

This was a kind of metal brace that people with crooked noses were advised to wear strapped to their head.  Ross advertised it as:

A simple, successful contrivance which, applied to the nose for an hour daily, so directs the soft cartilage of which the member consists, that an ill-formed nose is quickly shaped to perfection.

Before deciding whether to fork out 10s. 6d. for the Nose Machine, you could send off for an information pamphlet. Intriguingly, this also contained “interesting remarks on noses generally.”

C O M P L E X I O N   G L O B U L E S  produce  a  clear  com-
plexion  without   injury.     Strange,   but   true,   they   give   white-
ness to the hands and lustre to the  eye  if  taken  now  and  again.
They are perfectly harmless. 5s. free by post.—ALEX. ROSS, 21,
Lamb’s Conduit-street, London, W.C. Established 1850.
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P L U M P E R S   for   T H I N   F A C E S  are   placed  in   the
mouth,  between  the  teeth  and  the  cheeks,  making  the  profile
perfect, and the shape of the face  correct.   They  are  the  colour  of
the gums, and easy to wear.—Post 21s.—ALEX. ROSS, Inventor of
the Nose Machine, 21, Lamb’s Conduit-street, London.

Source: The Daily News (London) Friday 24 April 1891