11. Sears sold wafers designed to transfer arsenic to the wearer through the pores
In the 1890s and early 1900s a pale complexion, almost to the point of a transparent whiteness, was the desire of fashionable young ladies and the girls who emulated them. Parasols and enormous hats were two of the weapons wielded everywhere to achieve the look of having been shielded from the sun for all time. Various pastes and creams were also concocted by chemists to help the ladies in their pursuit of paleness to the point of a near cadaverous-looking lack of color. Among the ingredients which helped achieve the effect was arsenic. Arsenic was but one of the toxic chemicals ladies slathered on their skin to achieve fashionable beauty, both mercury and lead, toxic metals, were contained in cosmetics.
Sears sold through their catalog a wide variety of cosmetics and other beauty preparations, including a product which was known as Dr. Rose’s French Arsenic Complexion Wafers. Sears promised its customers that the product was perfectly harmless when used as directed, by applying the wafers to the skin. “Ladies, you can be beautiful”, promised the catalog. The wafers undoubtedly did cause paleness, as well as the condition known at the time as the vapors, as the toxic arsenic was absorbed into the skin and built up in the body, creating symptoms such as headache, confused thinking, fainting, fatigue, and many other conditions which in the day were considered female complaints, treatable with such things as cocaine based tonics and other elixirs.