Milk bath Milk bath A milk bath is a bath taken in milk instead of water. Often other scents such as honey, rose, lavender and essential oils are added. Milk baths use lactic acid, an alpha hydroxy acid, to dissolve the proteins which hold together dead skin cells. There are legends that Cleopatra bathed in donkey milk daily for her complexion. These legends have not been confirmed and some historians believe that Roman Empress Poppaea set this bathing fashion after Cleopatra's death. Queens Catherine Parr and later Elizabeth I of England used milk baths to make their skin appear more youthful and
Complexion Ages in Europe, the Latin term "complexio" served as the translated form of the Greek word "crasis", meaning temperament. The term “temperament” referred to the balance of the qualities of hot, wet, cold, and dry; each human body carried a different mixture of the elements. Thus, the Scythians, who lived in a cold climate, were considered colder and moister in complexion; the Aethiopians were hotter and drier. Complexion was defined as “that quality which results from the mutual interaction and interpassion of the four contrary primary qualities residing within the elements. These elements are so minutely intermingled as each to