What is the name of the fat substance used in ointments and cosmetics that is obtained from wool?
Cosmetics in ancient Rome their faces, requiring whitening makeup to fit their model of beauty. Women would often prepare their faces with beauty masks prior to applying makeup. One recipe called for the application of sweat from sheep's wool (lanolin) to the face before bedtime, emitting a stench often criticized by men. Other ingredients included juice, seeds, horns, excrement, honey, plants, placenta, marrow, vinegar, bile, animal urine, sulfur, vinegar, eggs, myrrh, incense, frankincense, ground oyster shells, onions with poultry fat, white lead, and barley with vetch. Bathing in asses’ milk was an expensive treatment that worked like a chemical peel and was used by
Ingredients of cosmetics changes the color. Alternatives exist, including the suspension of tiny flakes of a suitable material within the product, often a wax such as glycol distearate. A shimmery substance found on fish scales, most usually obtained from herring and one of many by-products of commercial fish processing, can also be used for pearlescent effects, primarily in nail polish, but is now rarely used due to its high cost, bismuth oxychloride flakes being used as a substitute instead. The Romans and ancient Egyptians used cosmetics containing mercury. Women of Roman Britain used a foundation made from animal fat, starch and tin oxide.