From Remedia: “A Girl’s Best Friend”

Lisa Haushofer of the Remedia blog has written a new piece focusing on physician P.J. Marie de Saint-Ursin’s L’ami des Femmes:

 In 1804, however, Marie de Saint-Ursin…composed a 376 page text that not only warned of the dire consequences of using the wrong tricks to enhance beauty but also provided recipes and instructions on how to do it right. But he was by no means simply a profit-hungry quack who had made a deal with the newly emergent French cosmetics industry. On the contrary, he was quite an illustrious figure, even for a physician. Among the many offices he had held during his life (and which he thoroughly listed on the front page of his manual), he had been chief physician to the Northern Army, an official of the Paris general council on health, and medical inspector to several military and civilian hospitals. He was a member of a number of medical, philosophical and scientific societies. So why did he compromise his scientific credibility in order to write a book on baths and balms?

That he compromised his credibility, he left his audience in no doubt. He felt that the task required him to reconcile a complex scientific subject with an audience that lacked any medical training, and that was not well accustomed to such technical and severe language: an audience of women.

In an article dedicated specifically to the medical lot of cosmetic advice manuals, Morag Martin argues that at the end of the eighteenth century, women became a particular focus of health education campaigns. The future of the young republic depended on women’s capacity to fulfill their roles as nurturers and educators of future citizens. Cosmetics, clothing and unhealthful habits had become topics of concern during the eighteenth century, as more and more illnesses had become associated with possibly harmful ingredients within cosmetic products. The Napoleonic Wars aggravated concerns about the health of citizens, and the health manual market flourished. But whereas earlier texts had emphasized moral and religious concerns against the disguising and seductive powers of cosmetics, and had demanded that the use of cosmetics be discontinued altogether, advice manuals at the turn of the century stressed their health risks, and suggested ways for the safe use of beauty-enhancing tools and practices. It was a compromise, Martin suggests, in which physicians recognized that they had to meet their audience half way in order to be heard by them.

In many ways, Saint-Ursin’s text fits Martin’s conclusion well. The last part of his book, for instance, is dedicated to concrete advice and recipes. Marie de Saint-Ursin insists that his recipes are distinct from the “charlatanism” that reigns on the beauty market. “Simple, like nature,” they are designed only to “help or correct her [nature],” in order to “reveal beauty’s splendor, to prolong its reign, or to compensate for its absence.” (273) This section is conveniently arranged by body part or affliction, and contains a mixture of warnings against noxious substances (mainly mineral and metallic substances like mercury and bismuth), advice for local illnesses (oil of laurel against head lice), and instructions on how to produce safe alternatives to noxious chemicals (alkanet root as a substitute for rouge). No concern is omitted by Marie de Saint-Ursin, he can help with wrinkles, rashes, and bad breath.

Read Lisa’s entire article here and check out the rest of the wonderful writing on Remedia.

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