Medicine in the Nineteenth Century: Deathly Pale - Arsenic in Cosmetics

Pale skin was the beauty goal of women in the 19th century.  But the quest for pale skin could turn deadly.  In July 1880, the "Indianapolis Sentinel" reported on a woman who gradually lost her sight as a result of taking arsenic for beauty purposes.  Another newspaper report told the story of a girl from St. Louis who took several boxes of wafers (pills) in an attempt to clean up a skin complaint. 

There were many beauty products for the skin available that contained arsenic. In Britain one of the most popular was known as Dr. MacKenzie's Improved Harmless Arsenic Complexion Wafers.  This product was also marketed under Dr. Simms, Dr. Rose and Dr. Campbell.  In the United States, the main brand was Dr. Campbell's. The above photo shows the compound for sale under the name of Dr. Rose in the Sears and Roebuck catalog of 1901 and 1902.  It remained available in the U.S. until well into the 1920's.  The product produced pale skin by destroying red blood cells. 

But here's the kicker:  The poisonous effects of arsenic have been known for centuries.  Indeed, it was the poison of choice in Medieval and Renaissance times.  Despite the claim that those arsenic wafers were "harmless", surely women in the 19th century knew better.  Apparently not.

Author's Notes: The Ghost of Browns Valley

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of ...Samuel Brown 

Samuel Brown?  Yes, he's known as the Paul Revere of Minnesota.  During a book event at the Browns Valley Library I learned all about the ghost of Brown's Valley.  Here is what the librarian, Bernice Piechowski, had to say about Sam:

"On April 19, 1866, Sam Brown, the son of Joseph R. Brown and at that time, the chief Army Scout stationed at Fort Wadsworth, started on horseback to warn the settlers there of what was thought to be an impending Indian attack. He rode the fifty-five miles in five hours only to find the report to be false. He was caught in a blizzard and lost his way, drifting many miles to the south and into the Waubay area. He is called the "Paul Revere of the Frontier" due to his famous ride."

Bernice sent me a section of a book about the ghosts of Minnesota.  Turns out that the seldom-seen ghost only comes out in spring blizzards on the plains. When there is heavy snow, sleet and rain, an exhausted horse is seen stumbling on urged by the tall, gaunt man in the saddle. 

Most of us out here know to stay indoors in such weather.  But if you're ever outside near Browns Valley during a spring blizzard, keep an eye out for Sam and his horse.  And now that I think of it, wouldn't this be a great idea for a book?

Life in the Nineteenth Century: True or False? Women Didn't Use Makeup

An 1863 advertisement for Laird's Bloom of Youth Fluid
Pearl for the skin

Did women use makeup in the nineteenth century?  Men didn't think so.  Ah, how naive. Because their women did use makeup but it was makeup designed to look natural as if the face were naked.

The skin was the focus of beauty.  The paler the better, for pale skin denoted that the woman did not have to work outdoors and therefore was of a higher class.  Besides bonnets and parasols to protect the skin from the sun, women used creams and lotions to lighten the skin tone.  Many of these were home concoctions but commercial prepartions were widely available.

There was a difference between skin-improving products and skin-masking products.  The latter were considered skin "paint".  Paints were associated with social climbers and momen who would trick men into marriage.  A woman who painted her skin was engaging in a disreputable effort to use artifice to hide her social status.

 But there was a problem: many of the preparations contained highly toxic chemicals like arsenic, lead, zinc oxide, mercury, nitrates of silver and acids.  Some women even ate chalk or drank iodine to achieve the desired effect.

For references or additional reading, see the Extras tab.

Medicine in the Nineteenth Century: More Old Names for Old Diseases

 

I was looking through the "Ladies of Plymouth Church Cookbook" from Des Moines, Iowa, 1876, when I encountered some disease names in the medicinal recipes section that I was unfamiliar with. Turns out these are all skin conditions. I decided to learn what they were:

Wen:  an epidermoid cyst (also known as a sebaceous cyst).  Commonly caused by entrapment of the surface epithelium of the skin.  The proferred treatment from 1876 was to wash the lesion in common salt dissolved in water everyday and it will be removede in a short time.  Today we know these lesions will not go away on their own.  Treatment is conservative surgical removal.

A felon:  Closed-space infections of the fingertip pulp most commonly the thumb and index finger.  In 1876 it was recommended that a strong mecurial (containing mercury) ointment be spread on the lesion with a linen cloth as soon as it first appears.  The treatment today is antibiotics and incision and drainage.

Salt-rheum:  various cutaneous eruptions, particularly eczema. Salt-rheum was treated in 1876 by steeping sweet ferns and using it as a drink or by bathing the affected parts.  Today, depending on the specific lesion, selected ointments are prescribed.

For references and additional reading, see the Extras section.

Author's Notes: 1883

My new book, The Secret Society of Sugar and Spice, is set in 1883.  What was happening in America that year?

 

Chester A. Arthur is president having become so after the assassination of Presidient Garfield in 1881.

Jan. 19th: The first electric lighting system using overhead wires built by Thomas Edison begins service in Roselle, New Jersey

Feb. 16th:  The Ladies Home Journal begins publishing

Mar 24th:  The first telephone call occurrs between New York and Chicago

May 24:  The Brooklyn Bridge is opened.  Six days later a rumor that the bridge is about to collapse causes a stampede and kills twelve people

Jul 4:  "Buffalo Bill" Cody puts on his first Wild West Show in North Platte, Nebraska

Nov. 3:  The US Supreme Court decides Native Americans can't be Americans

Nov. 18:  Five standard time zones are established by US and Canadian railroad companies to end confusion over thousands of local time zones

Info from:
http://americasbesthistory.com/abhtimeline1880.html
http://www.historyorb.com/events/date/1883

Author's Notes: What Was the Inspiration for The Secret Society of Sugar and Spice?

While researching nineteenth century orphanages in Minneapolis and St. Paul for my first book, Big Stone Heart, I happened upon an article in the periodical Minnesota History entitled "With Wise and Benevolent Purpose; Poor Children and the State Public School at Owatonna, 1885-1915" by Priscilla Ferguson Clement (Spring, 1984). The State School, as it was called, was established by law, opening in 1886 with the purpose of transferring children from poorhouses and from impoverished natural families to farm homes after a period of interim institutionalization.  One of the provisions of the law was to allow indigent parents to commit their children to the School.  Once the parent or parents signed the commitment papers, the children became a ward of the state.  All relationships with the parents were severed. Although the intent was honorable, as so often happens, there were unexpected consequences.

What must it have felt like to be cast aside by their parents, abandoned, left in an institution.  How would  these children have coped with the hurt, the resentment, the anger?  Thus was born the Secret Society of Sugar and Spice: a group of girls who shared a similar fate; who banded together to save runaway girls from suffering as they had suffered; whose mission helped dull the pain by giving purpose to their lives.

New Book Now Available!!

My new book, The Secret Society of Sugar and Spice, is now available in print paperback and e-book at www.amazon.com and www.whiskeycreekpress.com and in e-book format at www.barnesandnoble.com.  Here is the back cover blurb:

 Her name is Mace.  Like the spice. And the weapon.  At sixteen, she is the leader of the Secret Society of Sugar and Spice, a group of girls who are inmates of the Home for Abandoned and Orphaned Children and whose lives are only made bearable by their mission to rescue runaways from the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota. But now, in 1883, when the Secret Society is called upon to rescue Claire Sargent, a rich privileged girl who is being abused by her stepfather, their world is turned upside down and nothing is what it seems.  When Mace’s father reappears at the Home and a gang of thugs searches for Claire, Mace, too, becomes a runaway and flees into a world where she must learn that enemies can become friends and hatred can turn into forgiveness.

Teen Life Way Back When: The Lunch Pail

This photo from the Old Schoolhouse Museum in Mary Esther, Florida, evokes all kinds of images.  I can see an eight year old girl wearing a sunbonnet and swinging her tin lunch pail as she walks to school, laughing with her friends along the way, the sun warm on their faces.

What, with no refrigeration, in the days before the thermos and the invention of waxed paper, aluminum foil and plastic sandwich bags, did the lunch pail contain?  Contemporary accounts talk about cornbread with syrup, bread and lard with a little sugar, fresh fruit, nuts, a wedge of cheese, dried beef jerky.  Often, the lunch was based on left-overs from the day before and reflected the ethnicity of the family, perhaps Irish, Italian, German or Swedish.  Peanut butter wasn't invented until the 1890's, so for most of the nineteenth century no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches ( a personal favorite of mine)!  The children drank water from a dipper out of a bucket.  The water had to be carried from the nearest well or the children took turns at pumping it up from the well in the schoolyard.  Food was wrapped in a handkerchief or a piece of cloth.

If parents could afford it, they purchased a tin lunch pail.  If not, an empty cookie or tobacco tin was put to use. Commercial, decorated lunch pails, so popular in the 20th century, hadn't been invented yet and the public school lunch program wasn't instituted until the 1940's.

For references and additional reading, see the Extras tab.

TEEN LIFE WAY BACK WHEN: The Dunce Cap

If you'll look carefully in the upper left hand corner of this photo taken at the Old Schoolhouse Museum in Mary Esther, Florida, you will see a dunce cap sitting on a small child sized chair.  The docent at the museum provided me with a very thorough paper that reviewed the origin of the dunce cap.  Here it is in a nutshell:

Today, the word "dunce" refers to a dull-witted, stupid person, incapable of learning.  A dunce cap was usually made of paper and schoolchildren were forced to wear it as punishment for being stupid or lazy.  The term "dunce" derives from the name of a person:  John Duns Scotus.  He was a very influential philosopher-theologian of the High Middle Ages who lived from 1266 to 1308. He advocated wearing conical hats to increase learning similar to those worn by wizards.

As so often happens over time, the teachings of Scotus fell out of favor and were ridiculed and despised.  The conical hat became a symbol of ignorance instead of a symbol of learning.  By 1577, Scotus's name had been transformed into "dunce".  The first recorded reference was a "dunce table" provided for duller or poorer students in the 1624 play "The Sun's Darling" by John Ford.  The term "dunce cap" appeared for the first time in the 1840 novel "The Old Curiosity Shop" by Charles Dickens.

TEEN LIVE WAY BACK WHEN: 1915 Rules for Teachers

Visited a charming one-room schoolhouse museum in Mary Esther, Florida, the other day.  In 1915 the school board issued these rules for teachers, a perfect example of the restrictions working women endured.  Take a look:

1.  You will not marry during the term of your contract.
2.  You are not to keep company with men.
3.  You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function.
4.  You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.
5.  You may not travel beyond city limits unless you have the permission of the chairman of the board.
6.  You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother.
7.  You may not smoke cigarettes.
8.  You may not dress in bright colors.
9.  You may under no circumstances dye your hair.
10. You must wear at least two petticoats
11. Your dresses must not be any shorter than two inches above the ankle.
12. To keep the schoolroom neat and clean, you must:  sweep the floor at least once daily, scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water, clean the blackboards at least once a day, and start the fire at 7 a.m. so that the room will be warm by 8 a.m.

Medicine in the Nineteenth Century: Scoliosis

Treatment of scoliosis by suspension prior to casting, 1870
from Wiki Commons

Fascinating photos of the discovery of King Richard III's skeleton under a car park in Leicester, England, showed that the king suffered from severe scoliosis (curvature of the spine).  Check out this link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9846693/Richard-III-skeleton-is-the-king.html. 

Scoliosis has been known for centuries but what did we know about it in the nineteenth century and how was it treated? Back then there were multiple theories about what caused the spine to curve out of alignment.  They included:

• Girls were less physically active than boys causing their spines to be weak and grow crooked
• The furniture used in schoolrooms caused the children to sit at awkward angles
• Corsets worn by women
• Unequal leg lengths
• Muscle weakness on one side of the body

The truth is we didn't know what caused scoliosis back then and we still don't know what causes the most common form today.  Treatments in the 19th century and early 20th century included exercises for strengthening the back muscles, casts and braces and combinations of traction, suspension, bracing and postural corrections.  Today, the treatment consists of braces to prevent further progression in children who are still growing and spinal fusion surgery for those whose bones have completed the growth process.

 

For references and additional reading see Extras

Author's Notes: Coming Soon

My next book, The Secret Society of Sugar and Spice, should be available soon in e-book format and as a print paperback.  More info to follow.

Her name is Mace. Like the spice. And the weapon. At sixteen, she is the leader of the Secret Society of Sugar and Spice, a group of girls who are inmates of the Home for Abandoned and Orphaned Children and whose lives are only made bearable by their mission to rescue runaways from the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota. But now, in 1883, when the Secret Society is called upon to rescue Claire Sargent, a rich privileged girl who is being abused by her stepfather, their world is turned upside down and nothing is what it seems. When Mace’s father reappears at the Home and a gang of thugs searches for Claire, Mace, too, becomes a runaway and flees into a world where she must learn that enemies can become friends and hatred can turn into forgiveness. 

TEEN LIFE WAY BACK WHEN: Schooling for American Indians

Photos courtesy of Wiki Commons:  Sioux Indian Boys upon arrival at the Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1879

Last time we talked about the the education of children from widely separated families out here on the Great Plains in the one-room schoolhouse.  But there was another population of children and teens living in the area - the American Indian.  The policy of the United States Government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century on the education of native peoples is nicely summed up in this quote from the University of Washington (http://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/marr.html):

"The goal of Indian education from the 1880s through the 1920s was to assimilate Indian people into the melting pot of America by placing them in institutions where traditional ways could be replaced by those sanctioned by the government. Federal Indian policy called for the removal of children from their families and in many cases enrollment in a government run boarding school. In this way, the policy makers believed, young people would be immersed in the values and practical knowledge of the dominant American society while also being kept away from any influences imparted by their traditionally-minded relatives."

The photograph above shows a group of Sioux Indian boys as they were dressed upon arrival at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1879.  It was common to take "before" and "after" photos to show the public the civilizing effect of the boarding school on the children.  By the 1920's, the government changed its policies and Indian children were educated in local public schools.

Medicine in the Nineteenth Century: Cookbooks

Photo courtesy of Wiki Commons

I was surfing the web looking at cookbooks from the 1800's when I discovered not only recipes, but cures for everything from diphtheria to drunkenness.  Before now, I didn't realize that cookbooks also served as a medical guide for the home in the nineteenth century.

Last week, we talked about chilblains.  I paged through several cookbooks to see what they had to say about this mysterious disease.  Here are two suggested remedies:

From The "76", A Cook Book, published by the Ladies of Plymouth Church, Des Moines, Iowa, 1876.
"Mrs. J.P. Foster offers this treatment for chilblains:  Place red hot coals in a vessel and throw upon them a handful of cornmeal.  Hold the feet in the dense smoke, renewing the coals and meal till the pain is relieved.  This has been known to make very marked cures, when all other remedies have failed."


From The New Dixie Cook-book and Practical Housekeeper by Estelle W. Wilcox, 1889.
"Chilblains - Are the result of a chilling of the part.  To cure, keep away from the fire, and at night, before going to bed, wash in cold water, or rub in snow, and apply resin ointment ,made by all druggists, with a little oil of turpentine added to it."

The first one makes some sense in light of what we know today.  But the second one - yikes!  Rub the part in snow?

Old cookbooks courtesy of Chowhound.Chow.com

Excerpt from The Secret Society of Sugar and Spice

 

 

I have added an excerpt from the Secret Society of Sugar and Spice. Click here to read excerpt

 

TEEN LIFE WAY BACK WHEN: The One-Room Schoolhouse

From Flickr Commons

Out here on the Great Plains in the nineteenth century, most folks lived and homesteaded on the prairie far from their neighbors.  This presented a problem when it came to school.  Because the pupils were of all ages and grades, the one-room schoolhouse became the answer.  Male teachers were preferred because they could live independently.  However, single female teachers could not and had to lodge with the families of their students.  Once a female teacher married, her teaching career was over.

The schoolhouse was usually located centrally between the homes of the students.  Most of the time, the students walked to school.  In some areas, where it was so sparsely populated and distances were long, the children boarded at the school during the winter rather than attempt to get home each day.

The one-room schoolhouse had some sort of heat source, usually a wood burning stove. There was an outhouse behind the school.  Desks were lined up with the youngest students in the front and the oldest in the back.  The teacher taught all grades, first through eighth,  focusing on one group at a time assigning them a task to do while she turned her attention to another group. Arithmetic, reading, spelling, geography and history were taught among other subjects.

Medicine in the Nineteenth Century: Winter Weather Afflictions

It's going to get mighty cold here in the Midwest in the next couple of days, in fact, it's going to be below zero.  This is definitely frostbite weather (see my post on 10/12/2012 for more on frostbite).  Did you know that there is a disease that mimics frostbite, but isn't frostbite at all?

It's called chilblains (or pernio in medical speak).  Ever heard of it? The word chilblain was coined in 1540 from chill + blain (a blister, blotch, or sore on the skin).  With exposure to cold, damp weather and then sudden warming, the patient develops itching, red patches, swelling and blistering of the skin on the toes, fingers, ears and nose.  You can see how this could be confused with frostbite.

Unlike frostbite which is caused by actual freezing of the tissue, chilblains is caused by inflammation of the small blood vessels of the skin. But what is it about cold exposure that causes inflammation to form around the skin's small blood vessels? There's a really cool letter from 1947 in the archives of BBC Radio (see reference below) where Dr. Charles Hill says "doctors don't yet know anything to speak of about chilblains." Now, here's the interesting bit: We didn't know the answer in the nineteenth century or the twentieth century and we still don't know today!

Over the centuries there have been many treatments tried for chilblains.  Diane Atwood did an article on chilblains (see reference below) and here are a few historical remedies she discovered:

"Make a poultice of mashed potatoes and turnips mixed with a little turpentine

Soak your feet in a pot of warm urine

Take a raw onion, cut it in half and then rub vigorously onto the tortured toe and then sit back till the throbbing abates"

Today, chilblains are treated with topical steroids for the itching and swelling and medications that improve blood flow. Prevention is key: Limit exposure to cold, dress warmly and cover exposed skin.

References and additional reading:
















http://www.dianeatwood.com/catchinghealth/2011/01/chilblains-what-in-the-world-are-they/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/nhs/108.shtml
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/chilblains/DS01091

Author's Notes: New Release Dates

The Secret Society of Sugar and Spice is now scheduled for release in February. I will let you know when it is available!  Here is the back cover blurb:

Her name is Mace.  Like the spice. And the weapon.  At sixteen, she is the leader of the Secret Society of Sugar and Spice, a group of girls who are inmates of the Home for Abandoned and Orphaned Children and whose lives are only made bearable by their mission to rescue runaways from the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota. But now, in 1883, when the Secret Society is called upon to rescue Claire Sargent, a rich privileged girl who is being abused by her stepfather, their world is turned upside down and nothing is what it seems.  When Mace’s father reappears at the Home and a gang of thugs searches for Claire, Mace, too, becomes a runaway and flees into a world where she must learn that enemies can become friends and hatred can turn into forgiveness.

 

The Baby Farm (Book Two of the Secret Society of Sugar and Spice) is scheduled for release in October, 2013.  More details to follow!

 

Teen Life Way Back When: Bad Boys and Ghosts

What would a teen hunker down and read for pure enjoyment in the mid to late nineteenth century?  Besides the obvious authors that we're all familiar with such as James Fenimore Cooper or Louisa May Alcott, who else was popular back then?

Turning to my newest resource from this time period, The Common School Question Book and Review by Isaac Hinton Brown, I found this question:  "#35.  Name principal writers of recent fiction".  The answer contained a list of authors I'd never heard of but were apparently universally well known at the time:  Charles Dudley Warner, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, George Washington Cable, Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, Julian Hawthorne, Harriet P. Spofford and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.  I decided to investigate two of them Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Harriet P. Spofford.

  Cover of current edition

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, prolific novelist and poet, lived from 1836-1907.  One of his best known works, said to have inspired Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, was The Story of a Bad Boy published in 1870.  Described as a semiautobiographical memoir and realistic portrayal of an all-American boyhood, this novel featured the juvenile character "Tom Bailey".  Astonishingly, a search of Amazon.com revealed that this book is still in print, the most recent version published on April 27, 2011 (see photo).  Other books by Thomas Bailey Aldrich include Baby Bell, Marjorie Daw, Queen of Sheba and Still Water Tragedy.

Harriet Spofford from Wiki Commons

Harriet P. Spofford, 1835-1921, wrote poetry and novels.  Described as a "sentimentalist" by The Common School Book, she wrote gothic romances with, according to Wikipedia, "luxuriant descriptions and an unconventional handling of female stereotypes".  One of her more famous books was Sir Rolan's Ghost.  This book, too, is still in print.  The most recent edition by Nabu Press in Turkish was published on May 12, 2010 and is available through Amazon.com (that is, if you can read Turkish!).  Other books by this author include The Amber Gods, The Thief in the Night and The Servant Girl Question.

For references and additional reading see the Extras section.

TEEN LIFE WAY BACK WHEN: New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve celebrations today are a little different than they were back in the nineteenth century. Hogmanay or New Year's Eve was a Scots custom that spread to the British Isles and then was brought to America by immigrants.  Celebrations by the English and the Welch included recitations of traditional rhymes. The Swedes and Finns celebrated by firing off their guns. On New Year's day the ladies stayed at home to exchange New Year's greetings with a string of gentlemen callers.

If you were a teen living back then, you may have seen fireworks just like we do today.  Fireworks were  introduced in the United States very early in our history.  The first fireworks display was on the 4th of July, 1777, just a year after our independence. A resident of Philadelphia would have seem mummers dressed in costume parade through the streets, although the first organized Mummer's Parade wasn't until 1901.

Several traditions that we have today were not in place yet at the turn of the twentiety century.  The song Auld Lang Syne (roughly translated to "for (the sake of) old times"), although written as a poem by Robert Burns in 1788, wasn't widely known as a song in America until Guy Lombardo and his band introduced it on New Year's Eve in 1929. It soon became a classic played at midnight to ring in the New Year.  We've all seen the iconic image of the New Year's Eve ball drop in Times Square as midnight chimes, but it wasn't until 1907 that the first ball was installed.