The Pasta Pompadour

Pasta Pompadour was a skin preparation, but it sounds (at first) like a kind of false hair involving a great many macaroni-like curls (something akin to what the lady in the picture is sporting). Of course "pasta," meaning paste in Italian, can refer to the skin cream as well as to noodles made of an edible paste.

Not "paint or powder," Pasta Pompadour was a mixture of powdered bitter almonds and cold cream, according to Virgil Coblentz writing in The Newer Remedies (1908, p. 96). It had been invented by a Madame Rix, who was Austrian.* The cream would make wrinkles vanish and give the user  clear, perfect, youthful skin.

However, in 1876, The British Journal of Homeopathy (vol. 34,p. 625) featured an article entitled "Production of Nervous Affections By Cosmetics." One case history in the article concerns a lady complaining of headache, pain in her arms and legs and heart palpitations (among other things). She was fond of using a great deal of makeup, especially Pasta Pompadour, which "is composed of white precipitate, nitrate of bismuth, and lard."

The ad at the left boasts a Certificate of Analysis by a Dr. A.H. Von Bauer which states that it is "free from injurious substances." It was "endorsed by physicians" and by the "great German actress, Madame Geistinger," as well as other actresses and singers. The cream was sold in New York City by Dr. Leo Sommer and Company at 39 Bond Street.**

*According to a reference in "Materia Medica," Congressional Serial Set (1876, p. 13).

**Dr. Sommer was a "Hungarian investigator" who in 1887 obtained permission from the Mayor of New York to experiment on dogs at the City Pound; he wanted to give them his "hydrophobic inoculations" based upon the Pasteur method. However, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, under Henry Bergh, put a stop to this (see Weekly Medical Review vol. 16, 1887, p. 203); see here for more details on this. According to the Times, he was not a physician but a chemist (see "His Experiments Stopped," NYT, August 4, 1887, p. 8). Sommer seems to have given up science altogether by 1890, when the Times announced a performance by "Dr. Leo Sommer's Hungarian Orchestra" at the Lenox Lycaeum ("Attractions at the Lenox Lycaeum," NYT, April 28, 1890, p. 4). In 1899, an item about his falling off a streetcar and braking his leg mentions that he "owns a dozen or more Hungarian bands." ("Theatrical Gossip," NYT, January 7, 1899, p. 7). He also owned the Orpheum Music Hall in the early 1900s ("Notes of Theatricals," NYT, July 12,1903, p. 21).

Advertisement at top right, from The Cosmopolitan, volume 4, 1888; second advertisement, at left, from the Brooklyn Magazine, volume 5, 1886.