We may notice here too a few chapters on Toilet or Decorative Medicine, a branch of art to which modern physicians have devoted perhaps too little attention, with the natural result that it has fallen largely into the hands of charlatans of both sexes. Gilbert's chapter "_De ornatu capillorum_" offers the following sensible introduction: "The adornment of the hair affords to women the important advantages of beauty and convenience; and as women desire to please their husbands, they devote themselves to adornment and protect themselves from the charge of carelessness. In order, therefore, that our ministry may not be depreciated, and that we may not render ourselves liable to the accusation of ignorance, let us add a few words on the subject of the dressing of the hair and the general care of the person". Accordingly Gilbert advises ladies who desire to retain or renew the charms of youth to soften the skin and open its pores by the use of steam baths and careful washing in warm water, followed by drying the surface with the finest cloths (_panno mundissimo_). If necessary, superfluous hair is to be removed by suitable depilatories, color to be restored to the pale cheeks by a lotion of chips of Brazil-wood[6] soaked in rose-water and applied with pads of cotton; or, if the face is too red, it may be blanched by the root of the cyclamen (_panis porcinus_, sowbread) dried in an oven and powdered. A wealth of remedies for freckles, moles, warts, wrinkles, discolorations and other facial blemishes, with foul breath and fetidity of the armpits, is carefully recorded, and would suffice to establish the fortune of any of our modern specialists in female beauty. Finally a long chapter entitled "_De sophisticatione vulvae_" introduces us to a phase of decoration and sophistication which I would fain believe little known or studied in the development of modern civilization, in which we are prone at least to follow the advice of Hamlet, to "Assume a virtue, if you have it not." At all events, we may congratulate ourselves that the details of these disgusting cess-pools of medical art have disappeared entirely from the pages of our modern text-books. Even Gilbert considers it advisable to preface this gruesome chapter with a sort of "_Caveat emptor_" apology to the reader: "_Ut tamen secundum ordinem procedamus, in primis cognosactur cognoscere desiderantibus, ne dolus dolo patrocinetur, vel simplex dolose muscipula claudatur._" [Footnote 6: This apparent anachronism carries us back to the history of the mythical Island of Brazil, which appeared upon our charts as late as the middle of the 19th century.]