Women’s practices and knowledge about matter

some old cosmetics

Abstract

A large amount of texts was published between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Some of them were written by women. Those texts brought up the most varied procedures for preparing medicines and cosmetics. Although, those books may seem just simple and curious recipe books to our present day perception, once thoroughly investigated, they reveal elaborate knowledge about manipulation and transformation of matter. Such knowledge helped write the plot of human wisdom concerning the sciences of matter. Thus, the main purpose of this article is to unveil part of this plot, by analyzing a series of recipes for preparing cosmetics, focusing on some prescriptions published in books dedicated to ladies.