Edinburgh Napier University

  This chapter examines the way skin treatments were shared within popular culture from the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century. Focusing on dermatological treatments for the most common issues––pimples, freckles, and several other broadly defined defilements of the skin––these early modern examples of skincare can be found in a wide range of popular literature, including advertisements for skincare products, as well as self-help guides such as cookbooks, beauty manuals, manuscript recipes and dispensatories. The same kinds of remedies can also be found in professional publications. Taking examples from the first English medical treatise on the skin, Daniel Turner’s De Morbis Cutaneis: A Treatise of Diseases Incident to the Skin (1714), this chapter aims to address the commonalities between the various approaches to skincare from the period. The following analysis evidences a collaborative exchange of knowledge between professional and popular medical cultures, and questions how the use of similar treatments and the development of a shared medical language reveal a collaboration that transcends social and educational boundaries.