I put my moisturizer on this morning with a whole new sense of gratitude, and by the time you’ve read this, you will too. Because for all we moan about the price of a decent face cream, at least ours isn’t slowly poisoning us.
The same could not be said for the women of the Middle Ages, who painted, dabbed, and dripped some truly lethal things onto their faces in the name of looking lovely. The medieval beauty ideal was demanding.
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A lady was meant to have skin as pale as milk, a high, smooth forehead, rosy cheeks, red lips, bright, wide eyes, and fair, golden hair, all without a whisker of body hair anywhere it shouldn’t be. Chasing that look was a full-time job, and could put you in an early grave. Brace yourself.
White Lead: The Deadly Price of a Pale Face
We have to start with the big one, because no cosmetic on this list killed more people than white lead.
Pale skin was the ultimate status symbol in the Middle Ages. A tan meant you toiled outdoors in the fields like a peasant. Milk-white skin meant you were noble, idle, and untouched by hard labor, and women went to astonishing lengths to fake it.
The go-to product was ceruse, a paint made from white lead, the same lead they used in pipes and paint, ground up and mixed with vinegar or rose water.
Some women rolled it into little balls to store, then dissolved it and brushed it over their faces, necks, and chests for that fashionable ghostly glow.
The problem is that lead is a poison that soaks straight through the skin. Wear it day after day, and it builds up in the body with grim results. It corroded and greyed the very skin it was meant to beautify, which sent women rushing to slap on yet more ceruse to cover the damage, a vicious little circle.
Long-term lead poisoning also rotted the teeth, thinned the hair until the hairline crept back and the eyebrows vanished, and brought on stomach agony, tremors, infertility, miscarriage, and eventually madness and death.
Lead white had been used since ancient times and continued to be used long after the medieval period. Its most famous victim came in the Tudor period, in the pale mask of Queen Elizabeth I, whose Venetian ceruse is thought by some to have hastened her death.
Mercury: The Blemish Cure That Ate Your Face
If the lead gave you spots and scars, and it did, the medieval solution was to reach for something even worse. Mercury.
The sublimate of mercury, a compound now known as mercuric chloride, was prized for removing freckles, blemishes, pockmarks, and blotches. It certainly worked in the way that acid works.
It was corrosive, and what it actually did was burn off the top layer of the skin, taking the freckle with it and leaving a fresh, raw, temporarily smoother surface underneath. An early and brutal chemical peel using one of the most poisonous substances known.
The damage went far past a bit of burning. Mercury is a slow, patient poison. Women who used it over time developed loosened teeth and receding, bleeding gums, and many lost their teeth altogether.
They suffered uncontrollable tremors, the shakes that would later give us the phrase “mad as a hatter” from the mercury-poisoned hat trade. It attacked the kidneys and the nervous system, and brought mood swings, memory loss, and worse.
The face that mercury promised to perfect was, in the end, the face it wrecked, right down to the ruined teeth behind the smile.
Vermilion and Bryony: Deadly Reds for Lips and Cheeks
Against all that deathly pallor, a woman wanted a flush of rosy color, a sign of youth and good health. Naturally, the reds were poisonous too.
For a strong red on the lips and cheeks, a popular choice was vermilion, made from cinnabar, a mercury sulfide. Yes, more mercury, this time smeared directly onto the mouth. There was also red lead in a cheerful crimson form.
Safer options did exist, such as red ochre or a stain drawn from brazilwood, and sensible women used them. But the boldest, most sought-after colors were the toxic ones.
Then there was bryony, a poisonous climbing plant, which some women rubbed onto their lips and cheeks precisely because it irritated and inflamed the skin into a natural-looking redness. The medieval beauty writers were quite matter-of-fact about handling plants that could poison you, which tells you a lot about the priorities of the age.
Belladonna: The Beautiful Poison for Bigger Eyes
Large, dark, luminous eyes were considered the height of beauty and seduction, and women found a plant that delivered them instantly. They dripped a tincture made from deadly nightshade into their eyes, and its active poison, atropine, relaxed the muscles of the iris and blew the pupils wide and black.
The effect was dramatic, dreamy, and apparently irresistible. The Italians named the plant for what it did, belladonna, meaning “beautiful woman.” A more honest name might have been harder to sell, because deadly nightshade is one of the most toxic plants in Europe.
Dripping poison into your eyes goes about as well as you’d expect. Those dilated pupils could no longer contract properly, so the world went blurry, and close-up focus became impossible.
Bright light became painful, bringing squinting and headaches. The atropine sped up the heart and, in higher doses, brought hallucinations. And repeated use, day after day, for the sake of a smoldering gaze, was reputed to damage the eyes permanently and creep toward blindness.
Swallow the berries rather than dab the juice, and nightshade would kill you outright. Beauty, quite literally, was in the eye of the beholder.
Quicklime and Arsenic: Hair Removal That Burned and Poisoned
The medieval lady was supposed to be smooth and hairless, with a high, domed, gleaming forehead. Fashionable women plucked their hairlines and their eyebrows right back to exaggerate that lofty brow, which is why so many women in medieval portraits look faintly surprised.
But plucking is slow, and for the rest of the body, they wanted something faster. What they found was a paste that could take your skin off along with the hair.
The recipe, an ancient one still going strong in the Middle Ages, was called rhusma, and it combined quicklime with orpiment. Quicklime is calcium oxide, a caustic substance that burns on contact with skin.
Orpiment is a bright yellow mineral, and it is a compound of arsenic. So the beauty treatment was, essentially, a smear of burning lime laced with arsenic, left on the skin just long enough to dissolve the hair and, the recipes warned, not one second longer or it would scald you raw.
Get the timing wrong, and you had chemical burns. Use it often, and the arsenic did its slow, poisonous work through the skin.
Lye and Sunshine: The Dangerous Road to Golden Hair
Fair, golden hair was adored across the medieval world, and dark-haired women went to real trouble and real risk to get it.
The bleaching mixtures were harsh. Women doused their hair in solutions of lye and wood ash, both strongly alkaline and capable of burning the scalp, along with things like alum, and steeped it all in saffron or other plant dyes to coax out a golden tone.
Then came the sunbathing. To set the color, they would sit out for hours in the midday sun, often wearing a special brimmed but crownless hat that shaded the face while leaving the sodden hair spread out on top to bake. It was the tan they were desperate to avoid on the face, deliberately courted on the head.
The result of all this was frequently a scorched scalp, brittle straw-like hair, and hair loss, which rather defeated the purpose.
The Vicious Cycle of Poison and Vanity
The cures caused the very flaws they promised to fix. The lead that whitened your face also greyed and corroded your skin, so you painted on more lead to hide it. The mercury that cleared your blemishes rotted your teeth and thinned your hair, so you needed more paint and a wig to cover the ruin.
A woman could spend years, and a small fortune, on a beauty routine that was steadily and visibly destroying the beauty it was meant to protect. Round and round it went, poison chasing the damage of the last dose of poison.
And it wasn’t only the wealthy or only women, though noblewomen had the most time and money to harm themselves with. Vanity, it turns out, is one of history’s great constants.
Frequently Asked Questions
Were Medieval Cosmetics Really Poisonous?
Medieval cosmetics were often truly poisonous, because many were made from toxic metals and plants. Face whiteners used white lead, blemish removers used mercury, red lip and cheek colors used cinnabar and red lead, eye drops used deadly nightshade, and hair removers used arsenic and quicklime. Used over time, these caused lead and mercury poisoning, chemical burns, blindness, and in serious cases, death, making the medieval beauty routine a dangerous one.
What Did Medieval Women Use to Whiten Their Skin?
Medieval women whitened their skin mainly with ceruse, a paint made from white lead mixed with vinegar or rose water and brushed over the face, neck, and chest. Pale skin was a status symbol showing a woman did not labor outdoors. Unfortunately, lead is absorbed through the skin, so regular use causes lead poisoning, damaging the skin, teeth, and hair, and eventually the nervous system, with fatal results in the worst cases.
Why Did Women Put Belladonna in Their Eyes?
Women put belladonna, or deadly nightshade, in their eyes to dilate their pupils, because large, dark eyes were considered beautiful and seductive. The plant’s Italian name, bella donna, means “beautiful woman.” The atropine in belladonna widened the pupils dramatically, but it also blurred vision, caused painful light sensitivity and a racing heart, and with repeated use could damage the eyes and lead to blindness. The plant is highly poisonous.
Did Medieval People Actually Wear Makeup?
Medieval people did wear makeup, though the Church often frowned on it as vanity and deceit. Noblewomen in particular used skin whiteners, cheek and lip color, and treatments to remove hair and lighten it, following clear beauty ideals of pale skin, rosy cheeks, and a high forehead. Cosmetic recipes were even recorded in medieval texts, including the famous women’s health treatise known as the Trotula, dating to around the 12th century.
What Was Medieval Lipstick and Rouge Made Of?
Medieval lip and rouge was made from a range of ingredients, some safe and some toxic. Safer reds came from plants like brazilwood and from red ochre. The bolder, more prized colors, though, came from vermilion, which is mercury sulfide, and from red lead. Some women even rubbed the poisonous bryony plant to induce a natural-looking flush, meaning their rosy glow was effectively a deliberate rash.
Did Lead Makeup Kill Queen Elizabeth I?
Lead makeup may have contributed to Queen Elizabeth I’s decline, though it cannot be proven. Elizabeth, who reigned after the medieval period, famously used Venetian ceruse, a white lead paint, to create her pale mask-like complexion, especially over her smallpox scars. Long-term lead exposure can cause the very symptoms recorded late in her life, so many historians count her among the most famous possible victims of toxic cosmetics.
