COSMETICS AND THE FUTURE 269 provements, that sometimes it may seem that little more can be done in that direction. Naturally, many of the improve- ments were of a funda. mental na- ture, such as the introduction of suitable qualities of mineral oils others were more or less minor in importance, as the introduction of stabilizers. And I will never forget an incident that occurred some fif- teen or twenty years ago, when stabilizers were not yet commonly used to prevent rancidity and composition. A cosmetic chemist somewhere out West had produced what appeared to his employer to be the almost perfect specialty cream. It was the product he had long visualized in order to achieve a great success in the field of high- priced creams. No sooner did he put it on the market than he found that his storage samples started to take on an undesirable odor in other words, decomposition had set in with its usual destructive char- acter. What should be done about it.• At that time I happened to be out West. The cosmetic chemist put in an urgent call for me. After I learned the names of the raw materials used in the cream, I sug- gested a laboratory product which we knew had good stabilizing quali- ties in such cases, but which we had not yet brought on the market. We sent him a sample, and after a week or two of accelerated testing, and after six or eight months of nor- mal testing under natural condi- tions, the stabilizer was found to work 100%. It did all that the customer desired. The result was a $25 order, with the possibility of a similar order by the end of the year! At that time, it sounded rather discouraging, but it is en- couraging to know that today, more than 50,000,000 pounds of that fatty acid which made the disturbance in that cream, are being stabilized with the very same chemi- cal that looked so hopeless from an economic point-of-view, fifteen or twenty years ago. Cosmetics, and in particular creams, have so many missions to fulfill when they are used on the human body that, in order for a cosmetic chemist to improve the visible and invisible qualities, he must study not only the skin itself but its many functions and all the work it is supposed to do. Surely there is nothing better than a cream and its proper application that can be helpful toward that aim. Rightly or wrongly, it had always been my impression that if the chemicals, that is, the fatty acid derivatives, that are used in creams were to be the same or similar to the ones which are natural secretions of our skin, produced and expelled by our oil glands, such a prepara- tion would come close to the ideal. In fact, you may want to go just a little further and have the "natu- ral synthetic," if you will allow this expression, in beautifying qualities just a little better than the natural product. For instance, it should have much less or no tendency to decompose and become rancid it should be a crystal-clear liquid

27O which would not congeal at even very low room or storage tempera- tures it should not have any odor itself, and it should not be toxic or irritating in the slightest degree. It is rather a big order for any chemist to produce such a product, but our chemists were fortunate in being able to make a beginning which comes encouragingly close. Unfortunately, as in many of these cases, the economic factor is of considerable importance some- times, scientifically correct prod- ucts do not immediately find their full value with the consumer for this the scientist cannot be made responsible, but it does not dimin- ish the value. Time will usually solve that problem. But it is a step forward which goes parallel with the development and adoption of the theories of the telefinalist. Not only does the cosmetic chemist have to seek higher and higher levels in the world of his products, he must continuously fight deterioration which may creep in for many rea- sons, and must fight preparations manufactured by factors in the industry, who for economic rea- sons, or others, do not submit their product to the gruelling and exact- ing demands the true cosmetic chemist imposes on himself and/or his product before it is put on the market. The skin, as anyone can see on his own hands, is full of large and small blood vessels. And if you touch something very cold or very hot, you promptly become aware of the innumerable nerve endings in JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS your skin. If you walk through poison ivy, you will discover with sorrow that the skin is capable not only of absorbing chemicals of a benevolent nature, such as found in creams, but also harmful sub- stances, such as found on poison ivy and poison oak. It has, as you know, been proved that a good many chemicals can be introduced into the body and the blood stream, through the skin. Hence, hormone creams and creams used as carriers of antibiotics have been developed. That subject brings us to dangerous ground, since as a whole, and rightly so, cosmetics should not become drugs. However, the fields are so related that they cannot be separated abso- lutely from one another. Take the case of secondary infections: they may be the result of blackheads, or of an inflammation of the follicles of a hair, perhaps a slight injury to the oil or sweat glands, or to many other possibilities. They all have the tendency to mar the beauty of the skin. The cream that prevents secondary infection, a cream that has more or less healing qualities, surely is also a beautifying medium. But even if we do not go as far as to emphasize the value cream in preventing fections, if we only slight lesion in the protection against micro-organisms in chanical way, we of a cosmetic secondary in- admit that a skin obtains all types of a purely me- come within the scope of what you would call preventive medicine. Surely, no medical man would construe such a