Puppidog Water for the face
In her 1690 pamphlet Mundus Muliebris, Mary Evelyn included a recipe for a woman's facial lotion. She called it "Puppidog Water for the Face":
The recipe was intended to be satirical, but Fenja Gunn, in her 1973 book The Artificial Face: A History of Cosmetics, notes that it was satire rooted in contemporary realities — notably the persistent rumor that Elizabeth I's pomade was made from puppy dog fat, and the seventeenth-century belief that drinking puppy dog urine was good for the complexion.
Some more info about puppy dogs used as moisturizers can be found on the Early Modern Medicine blog:
Take a Fat Pig, or a Fat Puppidog, of nine days old, and kill it, order it as to Roast; save the Blood, and fling away nothing but the Guts; then take the Blood, and Pig, or the Puppidog, and break the Legs and Head, with all the Liver and the rest of the Inwards . . . to that, take two Quarts of old Canary, a pound of unwash’d Butter not salted; a Quart of snails-Shells, and also two Lemmons . . . Still all these together in a Rose Water Still . . . Let it drop slowly into a Glass-Bottle, in which let there be a lump of Loaf-Sugar, and a little Leaf-Gold.
The recipe was intended to be satirical, but Fenja Gunn, in her 1973 book The Artificial Face: A History of Cosmetics, notes that it was satire rooted in contemporary realities — notably the persistent rumor that Elizabeth I's pomade was made from puppy dog fat, and the seventeenth-century belief that drinking puppy dog urine was good for the complexion.
Some more info about puppy dogs used as moisturizers can be found on the Early Modern Medicine blog:
The medicinal use of puppies, known for their moisturising quality, is detailed in French physician Ambroise Paré's The Method of Curing Wounds by Gun-Shot (1617), which included a recipe for a healing balm that requires boiling two young whelps. The same recipe can be found in Nicholas Culpeper's Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1653). To make 'Oleum Catellorum or Oil of Whelps,
Takes Sallet Oil four pound, two Puppy-dogs newly whelped, Earthworms washed in white Wine one pound; boil the Whelps til they fall in pieces then put in the worms a while after strain it, then with three ounces of Cypress Turpentine, and one ounce of Spirits of Wine, perfect the Oil according to Art.
Takes Sallet Oil four pound, two Puppy-dogs newly whelped, Earthworms washed in white Wine one pound; boil the Whelps til they fall in pieces then put in the worms a while after strain it, then with three ounces of Cypress Turpentine, and one ounce of Spirits of Wine, perfect the Oil according to Art.
Comments
Apparently eye of newt wasn't a big ingredient for these recipes.
Posted by KDP on 02/05/23 at 07:10 PM
Nor was wing of bat.
Posted by Virtual in Carnate on 02/06/23 at 06:12 AM
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Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues | Dogs | Seventeenth Century