Deja Vu

October 10, 2012

Skin Deep

Tags:

alchemy,

beauty,

death,

health care,

women

2012: A Hong Kong woman has died after contracting septic shock related to a blood-related beauty treatment commonly given to cancer patients. Three other women remain hospitalized after receiving the same procedure, which doctors have not recommended for cosmetic purposes. The spa where the treatment was given has been ordered to cease performing the treatment immediately. CNN reports:

The 46-year-old died Wednesday morning at a local hospital one week after receiving the treatment, local authorities said.

According to the Hong Kong Health Department, the DC-CIK procedure involves the “concentration and processing of blood taken from the person, and subsequent infusion of the mixture back into the patient.”

It’s not clear whether any of the women who received the treatment had been diagnosed with cancer, though the Hong Kong Health Department said in an earlier statement that the 46-year-old had been in “good past health.”

1701: Desire of well-heeled women to retain their youthful complexions sometimes resulted in disfigurement or death, of themselves or their male suitors. Signora Toffana, a Sicilian peddler of arsenic-laced face enhancer, was accused of causing the deaths of 600 men who got too close to paramours adorned with the product:

Under holy guise, the liquid passed, as a sacred article, the Neapolitan custom-houses untaxes; and; “so well the fashionable med’cine thrives, that now ‘tis pracis’d ev’n by country wives: Pois’ning without regard of fame or fear, and spotted corpses are frequent on the bier.”

Toffana took refuge in an ecclesiastical asylym, where she bade defiance for some time to justice, and continued to vend her catholicon. Being put to the rack, she confessed her enormities, named those who had afforded her protection, and admitted that she had been instrumental in the death of no less than six-hundred persons. She was privately strangled, and her body thrown into the courtyard of the convent from which she had been taken.

• Email /
• Print /
• Comment now