Wooweee is the D.C. area hot this weekend! Even with the mid-afternoon hours wasted away napping in the central air conditioning (not even the dogs want to go outside), it’s been pretty unbearable. And in the short time I did spend outside, well, I’ll be honest, I’ve been perspiring quite a bit. What’s a girl to do?
Well, this girl of course turned to the books for a little advice on personal hygiene, specifically how to “neutralize body odors.” This was found in volume one of Lovely Ladies.
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There are so-called deodorants on the market which neutralize body odors. If you have the idea that they are injurious to you, and that by suppressing excess perspiration in a certain place it will only appear somewhere else, then use one of the powder deoderants which neutralize all body odors without in any way suppressing elimination through the pores.
Deodorants, talcum powder, astringents, mouth washes, the proper treatment of the skin areas that are too active in their functions of eliminating waste will remove all possibilities of unpleasant odors. If the area under your arms, for instance, is overactive in its eliminating functions, you can gradually and harmlessly close the pores and make them smaller and consequently less active with the use of a mild astringent after bathing. You can completely neutralize foot odors and in time quite correct any such abnormal condition by bathing them night and morning in a saturated solution of boracic acid and then dusting the powdered boracic acid into them in the place of talcum powder. Of course, you will not have to do this for longer than a week or two at the most, because after the condition is corrected just using the powdered boracic acid instead of talcum will keep them in a healthy condition.
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Just as a warning, I wouldn’t recommend trying these treatments without doing some further research (I guess boracic acid is still used these days, but seems a bit scary to me). But still, I thought that bit about closing your pores entertaining for a hot summer day.