Medicine: Cosmetics

Rouge, powder, lipstick were sponsored as simples for sanity, last week, by Dr. Edgar George Thomssen at the 34th annual convention of the American manufacturers of toilet articles, at Atlantic City, N. J. An approving audience heard about insane women led back to lucid normality by being given cosmetics to play with. Those more scientifically-minded pointed to the fact that if during the deep depressions and maniac excitements of insanity, patients are oblivious of their appearance, become dirty, disorderly, slovenly when left to themselves, they would be equally oblivious of the daintiest creams and cosmetics. Only when the psychotic state has changed, when they are again aware of the outside world and the need of adjustment to it, do patients remember how they look. Interest in beauty aids is probably a manifestation rather than a cause of returning sanity.