# Ways Our Ancestors Killed Themselves In The Name of Fashion



## SeaBreeze (Nov 11, 2015)

Odd and interesting.  http://listverse.com/2015/11/11/10-ways-our-ancestors-killed-themselves-in-the-name-of-fashion/




> Humans, especially women, have always craved the latest fashion fads and items like clothes, cosmetics, shoes, hairstyles, bags, dressing styles, and so on. While we do have issues with many fashion items today, including lead-laced lipstick, high heels that damage bones and leg muscles, and whitening creams that cause cancer, we’d be shocked to find out that today’s fashion dangers are actually mild when compared to that of our grandparents—who took it to highly deadly levels.


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## jujube (Nov 11, 2015)

Belladonna eye drops were used by the Victorians to dilate the pupils and make the eyes look darker and more gleaming.  It had the side effect of distorting vision and increasing heartrate. 

Pregnant women didn't appear in public after they starting showing, so they laced themselves into tighter and tighter corsets so that they could go out in society longer.  This led to maternity problems, obviously. 

Women generally did not leave their boudoirs without wearing their tightly-laced corsets.  If a lady had a cold and/or cough, lacing herself into a tight corset and constricting their lungs lead to pneumonia, which usually lead to death.  

In Napoleonic times, lampblack was used as mascara.  Can you image lampblack in your eyes?  

In more modern times, people actually ingested tapeworm eggs to lose weight and models/starlets had their back teeth pulled to give them the fashionable hollow-cheek look.


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## SeaBreeze (Nov 11, 2015)

Wow Jujube, thanks for the additions!


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## Ameriscot (Nov 12, 2015)

As interested and charmed as I am by the past, I am very glad I didn't live back then!


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## SifuPhil (Nov 12, 2015)

They should bring some of those back - it would thin the herd, so to speak.

I particularly liked the nitrobenzene shoe polish. Oddly, it is still used to this day in the production of acetaminophen.


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## fureverywhere (Nov 12, 2015)

Reminds me of something interesting I read about. One of the occupational hazards of being a stage performer back in the day was being burned. I suppose your stage makeup might have been poisoning you as well...but it was the stage lights. Before electricity you had open flame. There were some noted ballet stars who became crispy critters.


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## jujube (Nov 12, 2015)

The phrase "mad hatter" or "mad as a hatter" comes from the fact that mercury was used during the production of the felt used for making hats.  The hat makers absorbed the mercury through their hands and voila....went mad.


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