MODERN COSMETICS--ILLUSION AND REALITY 511 for illnesses which are either fanciful or the cure of which will never be found in a tablet, is so strong that no doctor could refuse to prescribe. Similarly, the desire of women to stay young in appearance needs creams ß and lotions to reinforce and encourage the illusion. On this basis, the average :skin care cream is just as necessary and no more fraudulent than the well known compound of g!ycerophosphates "tonic". Although there is no .cream which will arrest the appearance of age or turn the clock back, there is evidence to support the theory that women who have regularly used skin .care preparations have better skins than those who have not. Expensive packaging will convey to the user the idea that a product is .considered worthy of a luxury pack, whereas a cheap pack can only reinforce .her own doubts about the value of all such products. Additionally, as the putting on and cleaning off of night creams over a period of ten or twenty years can become rather boring, a package and product is required which will convey a certain sense of uniqueness and pleasure. Measured in this way, some of the skin care products on the market are either well below the standard required or possibly formMated to another conception a!to- .gether. For example, one could formulate skin care products along so called "'medical" lines, on the basis that all "do you good" preparations are more or less unpleasant. This might account for the continued existence of the ,traditional greasy, heavy night cream in which the perfume has utterly failed to cover the basic unpleasant odour of the fats and other ingredients. The pharmaceutical industry, however, has moved completely away from this concept of medical preparations in the last decade and development work has been carried out to make medicaments more acceptable to the user, for there is more likelihood of the patient continuing the dosage if the medicine is not unpleasant to take. In persuading women to use skin care preparations as early as possible in life and to continue with their use, it is equally necessary to develop products which are not repugnant either to the user or to any other person in the vicinity. The oily, unaesthetic night cream has no more place in the present-day bedroom than the wearing of curiers or the habit of taking •out one's dentures overnight. Elegance and pleasure must also be strongly associated with the product and pack of the moisturising or day creams and lotions. It must be dis- tressing to purchase a moisturising cream named "Heavenly Petal Dew" ,only to find that it will not pour readily out of its bottle, or that, in the case .of a polythene pack, all that is left of the perfume is a strong candle-like •odour. The cosmetic industry today is expanding at a rate well in excess of the average increase for industry generally. From this, one can only conclude that not only are more women buying cosmetics but that all women are

512 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS buying more cosmetics. This points to the cosmetics market becoming a mass market in the same way as the toiletries market. As the mass market is much more ruthless in dealing with over-priced, inferior products than the luxury market, now is the time to eradicate such products. Their existence can only serve to hold back the development of the mass market because an unsatisfied user can easily become a non-user. Those of us who are on the technical side of the industry should be the severest critics of its products. (Received: 7th May 1968)