Contents
A world history of misconceptions: how our ancestors treated acne
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Humanity has accumulated a lot of ways to combat this disease – funny, ridiculous and dangerous …
Patchouli and honey, velvet stickers, mercury lotions, wrapping in red cloth and birth control – the history of the fight against acne (acne, or, in a simple way, pimples) goes back to the time of Tutankhamun. During this time, mankind has accumulated a lot of ways to combat this disease – ridiculous, ridiculous and dangerous. We decided to remember the brightest of them.
Ancient Egypt: Treatment with Honesty
The Egyptians believed that if a rash appeared on a person’s face, it was a sign that he was lying. Therefore, the main recipe for fighting acne was prescribing an honest lifestyle and patchouli oil.
By the way, not only ordinary people, but also pharaohs suffered from acne: Tutankhamun, for example, suffered from this problem almost all his life. It is not known for certain whether he was a liar, but he used patchouli regularly. Alas, without any result.
“Wrap the patient in a red cloth and wait” – this is how the recommendations of doctors to combat acne and other skin rashes (including smallpox, which was common at that time) in the Middle Ages looked like. It was believed that the red color lures all bad things out of the body. I didn’t lure.
Renaissance, England: lead powder
During the reign of Elizabeth I, a perfectly white complexion came into fashion and, as a result, all kinds of powders that helped to achieve such a shade. Girls and women with skin imperfections used the powder especially actively: two or three layers of wonderful powder, and a fashionable disguise hid all the problems. Alas, this did not bring any benefit to the skin: both due to the fact that under a thick layer of makeup it did not breathe at all, and due to the fact that the powders of those years contained lead.
By the way, despite the fact that the composition of powders has changed a lot since then, it is not worth trying to mask imperfections with their help even nowadays. Making it difficult for the skin to breathe, decorative cosmetics provokes even greater inflammation. As a last resort, you can pick up non-comedogenic products of mineral origin.
Renaissance, France: flies
The famous flies with which the French aristocrats adorned themselves were originally not decorations at all, but a means of disguising imperfection. They could have very different shapes: a circle, a triangle, a crescent, a flower. It was believed that the more such marks on the face, the more status a person is. Therefore, they subsequently began to be sculpted just like that, not only on damaged areas. At least, this way they did less harm (under the flies, the pimples became very inflamed).
Method from the series “beauty requires sacrifice”: how many women died from experiments with mercury lotions, history, alas, is silent. Probably, there were a lot of them, since such a treatment was practiced not for a day or two, but for months, but in some European countries for years.
XNUMXth century: antibiotics
Antibiotics are undoubtedly one of the proven methods of fighting acne. However, modern scientific data show that bacteria, although one of, but far from the main cause of the appearance of acne, therefore, after a course of antibiotics, acne often recurs. In addition, with the wrong use of antibiotics, there is a risk of developing bacterial resistance – a phenomenon in which bacteria develop resistance to the action of an antibiotic, and over time its effect is reduced to zero.
That is why modern standards prescribe to limit the use of antibiotics in the treatment of acne in a short course, and also prescribe not to use them as monotherapy, but to add to them drugs that affect not only bacteria, but also other causes of acne (disruption of the formation of skin cells, which leads to blockage of pores, increased production of sebum and the appearance of inflammation due to bacterial activity in the clogged sebaceous hair follicle, provided there is a nutrient medium – the very sebum).
The more comprehensive and multifactorial your acne arsenal is, the better. For example, a remedy for acne acts immediately on three causes of acne: it normalizes the processes of keratinization of the skin, reducing the clogging of pores, fights bacteria, while not being an antibiotic, and relieves inflammation and redness. In addition, it can be used during active solar periods in conjunction with decorative and care cosmetics, as well as during pregnancy and breastfeeding (after consulting a doctor).
MAT-43421, RU P N014589 / 01, P N014589 / 02