Ye olde pimple remedies

For those of you who are squeamish or are dog lovers, skip to the next paragraph.
Seventeenth-century Britons were as concerned about pimples as we are today.
According to an old manuscript of home remedies that was recently discovered,
people with acne were advised to cut the heads off two puppies, hang them up by
their heels to bleed, collect the blood, mix the blood with white wine, and apply the
concoction to the face. Yeech! Don’t try it; it won’t work!
At the beginning of the 20th century, most of the acne treatments involved the cor-
rection of intestinal disorders such as indigestion and constipation. Recommended
anti-acne regimens included low-fat and low-sugar diets. Sound familiar? Excessive
sweating was discouraged, and — get this — some doctors recommended that
erotic preoccupation be avoided (without doubt, a difficult prescription to follow).
Active surgical treatment at that time included opening up and draining acne lesions
(they’re the zits), vigorous scrubbing, steaming, and washing with soap and hot
water. All of this was followed by the application of foul-smelling chemicals includ-
ing sulfur. For difficult-to-manage acne in middle-aged women, arsenic — both
applied to the skin and injected into it — was sometimes used!
In the middle of the 20th century, when I was a teenager, I distinctly remember some
of my fellow high school classmates coming to school with red, scaly faces the day
after they visited their dermatologists. I’ve since learned that they were subjected
to restrictive diets, carbon dioxide slush, superficial X-ray treatments, and ultravi-
olet light exposures, only to be followed by self-applied rigorous cleansings, scrubs,
and chemical peeling agents. Ugh, no wonder their faces looked like red apples! It
seems barbaric today, but that’s all they had to treat acne at that time. Believe me,
people who have acne today are much better off than when I was a teenager.