Why do not women resort to achieve a beautiful appearance: in our time, plastic surgery and various injections are becoming popular. But if you compare these manipulations with secrets of beauty from past centuries, then they will seem to you just "flowers."
Cinderella's legs
In China, fragile and small women have always been valued, and one of the most popular traditions of the past centuries is the bandaging procedure for feet. At the age of 7-9 years, girls began to bandage their feet, while breaking the bones and completely disrupting the natural structure of the foot. Thus, the function of blood vessels was disrupted, leading to necrosis of the tissues: sometimes the fingers fell off the girls, but this was even liked by the Chinese, because then their foot became even smaller. Small feet were an indicator of the noble origin of the girl: ideally, the leg should have reached no more than 7 cm in length, such legs were called "lotuses". Despite the terrible consequences of this procedure, its existence, it ceased only in the 20 th century.
Powder of poisonous substances
At all times, beautiful and well-groomed skin was especially appreciated among girls, so even since ancient times beauties began to think about various ways to hide their shortcomings - and cosmetics appeared. The history of lead powder originates from Ancient Egypt, but it gained real popularity only in the Middle Ages: then the smallpox was especially widespread, which left terrible traces on the skin, and the lead powder equalized the complexion and gave it aristocratic pallor. But, despite the excellent external effect, eventually lead particles penetrated the skin, thereby causing even more serious scars on it, and also the substance caused damage to the nervous system, the formation of tumors and even paralysis.
Corsets
Since the 18th century, a thin waist has become fashionable, and to this day this trend remains relevant. But if now girls are actively involved in sports and eat right to achieve the desired result, then earlier everything was not so colorful: from an early age girls were taught to wear tight corsets, the skeleton of which was created from whalebone, metal or wood. Such corrective underwear pulled the waist, beautifully lifted the chest, made the posture more even and expressive, but at the same time, the constant wearing of the corset led to terrible consequences: fracture of the ribs, atrophy of the breasts and disruption of the internal organs. On the way to his dream - a waist of 40 centimeters - the girls often fell into fainting, and also could not exercise and even bend over.
Juice of wild berry in the eye
Belladonna is a plant whose properties are known and used in medicine for several thousand years: for example, in ancient Rome, its juice was used as a poison. Another name - "rabid berry" - belladonna was due to its ability to cause a state of intense agitation in humans. By the 18th century, drops from this plant gained great popularity among aristocrats in Europe. Literally a couple of drops were able to expand the pupils and give the eyes a radiance: this effect was achieved due to relaxation of the eye muscles. But, as they say, beauty requires sacrifice. Drops from belladonna caused hallucinations, complete loss of vision, and even could lead to a fatal outcome - despite this, they were not used until the 20th century.
Reception of tablets with larvae of tapeworms
The twentieth century has become a time dictating to women fashion for a bad figure. For the sake of approaching the standard of beauty, they decided on desperate actions, including taking specific diet pills. Such tablets contained a larva of a tapeworm - a bovine tapeworm. Thus, the parasite got inside the body, began to feed on the hostess's food, as well as its nutrients, forcing the woman to lose weight, while he himself reached a large size. However, this method had rather deplorable consequences: worms caused various diseases in women, and a strong growth of the parasite could lead to the death of the mistress. Of course, there were various methods of getting rid of the worm, but it was not possible to find a fully working method: it was practically impossible to remove the progeny of the parasite from the body.
Arsenic
If now the name of this substance is associated with us with the word "poison", then in the 19th century girls actively used arsenic as a cosmetic means: he gave the face an aristocratic pallor, and his eyes acquired a happy shine. The drug started to take from small doses and gradually increased them, as a result of which people had a real addiction: after stopping the use of arsenic in the body, there were problems with the work of the gastrointestinal tract, abdominal pain, vomiting. When women constantly took poison, as a result they died from various complications.
Mice in the hair
In the 19th century, girls with voluminous and high wigs were famous for their appearance in the society of aristocrats. The beauty of the hairstyle was determined by the complexity of its performance and size, and the more interesting the wig was, the more significant and noticeable was its owner. The height of the wigs was about 30 centimeters, and as a result, they had a lot of weight. To shape and strengthen the structure of the wig, pig fat was used: this procedure took a long time, so everyday manipulation with the wig was impossible. Therefore, the girls did not take off their hairstyles for a long time - a fortnight or more. As a result, the pork fat on the head of the owner of a lush hairstyle became a bait for mice, and they suffer many serious diseases.