Cold Cream

Cold Cream is the collective term for a protective and restorative ointment for the rapid regeneration of dry skin, to stress sensation and redness. The name derives from the cold feeling you feel on the skin when applied.

Development

Today like named with the English name " Cold Cream " ointment is known in France under the name " Cerat de Galien " (also " ceratum refrigerans ") after the Greek physician Galen. This mixed already in the second century water and beeswax with olive oil. For a pleasant fragrance attended Rose extracts.

Over the centuries, the olive oil was replaced by other vegetable oils; so-called mineral oils with which there were attempts are always hydrocarbons from petroleum production and can not pass through the skin. The beeswax has remained an important part, as it accelerates the regeneration of dry skin and counteracts the voltage sense and the redness of the skin. Also, sometimes the mineral borax has been added, which acts weak disinfectant. The typical white color of the cream is due to the incorporation of water into the fat / wax based.

After Meyers Lexicon the ointment is prepared around the year 1890 as follows: " .... a very mild, soft white ointment, which is especially recommended against rough skin. They were prepared from 4 g of white wax, spermaceti 5 parts, 32 parts of almond oil, 16 parts water and 1 part of rose oil and also adds probably a little glycerin added. "

Literary fame a process called cold cream product by some passages in Thomas Mann's novel "The Magic Mountain " in which it repeated both for the characterization of local conditions ( Davos ) as well as characters in the novel and their personal feelings serves. In this case, it is a means which, after shaving ( here is an early stage, with the knife and the security apparatus, spoken by two methods of wet shaving ) applied alleviate the so-called razor bumps, but also climate-related conditions by heating and flushing - one of the leitmotifs of the work - is intended to provide a remedy.

Gustave Flaubert mentions the cream already in Madame Bovary ( 1857): " ... for him they wasted a ton of cold cream for their skin ... "