Fight fire with fire...

From the excellent Toilet of Flora:


Okay. Just as long as I never, ever have to find out what boiling urine smells like.


Anyway; although it wasn't easy finding one single recipe that didn't include horse dung, white lead, endangered species or ox-gall (N.B. not necessarily together), I finally managed to dig out not only one but TWO recipes that I will try at the end of the month. Stay tuned.

The Toilet Of Flora

What a find!

While doing my daily lurking at 18c Woman, I stumbled over a true gem, posted by none other than Chole, who is the person behind Slightly Obsessed and clearly quite awesome:

The Toilet Of Flora;
Or,
A Collection
Of The
Most Simple And Approved
Methods Of Preparing
Baths,
Essences,
Pomatums,
Powders,
Perfumes
And
Sweet-scented Waters

With Recepits for cosmetics of every kind, that can smooth and brighten the SKIN, give force to BEAUTY And take off the appearance of OLD AGE and DECAY

There's over 300 recipes for everything from snuff to soap to "cosmetic juice" to "An excellent Preservative balsam against the plague" - I can swear the book has everything except a liniment against flesh-eating zombies, but maybe it's because I haven't looked close enough.

Sorry guys, but it says clearly that it is FOR THE USE OF THE LADIES (which makes me ponder about "A liniment to change the Beard and Hair black", but should a lady wish to dye her beard black I suppose it's an excellent method. Unless you're allergic to lead and tar).

I'm so going to try some of these recipes one day soon. I suppose there must be a few that aren't absolutely fatal, and once I figure out what all of the ingredients actually are, and where I can obtain them, I'll report back.

Oh, and the best part about all this? The book is available at Google Books, downloadable as a PDF. Yes, please!