Note (return) — Gilbertus Anglicus (Gilbert of England)

Accordingly Gilbert advises ladies who desire to retain or renew the charms of youth to soften the skin and open its pores by the use of steam baths and careful washing in warm water, followed by drying the surface with the finest cloths (panno mundissimo). If necessary, superfluous hair is to be removed by suitable depilatories, color to be restored to the pale cheeks by a lotion of chips of Brazil-wood6 soaked in rose-water and applied with pads of cotton; or, if the face is too red, it may be blanched by the root of the cyclamen (panis porcinus, sowbread) dried in an oven and powdered. A wealth of remedies for freckles, moles, warts, wrinkles, discolorations and other facial blemishes, with foul breath and fetidity of the armpits, is carefully recorded, and would suffice to establish the fortune of any of our modern specialists in female beauty. Finally a long chapter entitled "De sophisticatione vulvae" introduces us to a phase of decoration and sophistication which I would fain believe little known or studied in the development of modern civilization, in which we are prone at least to follow the advice of Hamlet, to