Lead-Based Face Paint 

In Elizabethan England, pale skin was fashionable, seen as a sign of wealth and leisure. To achieve the look, many women turned to a popular foundation known as Venetian ceruse. Made with vinegar, water, and white lead powder, it certainly cast women in their desired pallor. But used over extended periods, it could also lead to skin discoloration and hair loss; over a long time, exposure to lead can also cause neurological damage. 

Lead was present in other cosmetics at the time, too. Rouge was a common makeup often formulated from white lead with colored dyes mixed in. But Elizabethans weren’t the first to use lead in their beauty regimens: Evidence points to its use not only in ancient Roman times but also as far back as 3500 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia and 3000 BCE in ancient Egypt.

Belladonna Eyes

During the Renaissance era in Europe, especially in parts of Italy, beauty ideals often emphasized large, luminous eyes. To get the desired effect, some women used eyedrops made from Atropa belladonna, a highly toxic plant also known as deadly nightshade. The plant contains atropine — the compound that, in carefully measured, sterile doses, your eye doctor might give you today to dilate your pupils.  

That’s exactly what Venetian women were aiming for, too. But their doses were unregulated and applied repeatedly for the cosmetic effect of big, alluring eyes. The cost was high: Belladonna interferes with the nervous system and often causes blurred vision, extreme light sensitivity, and disorientation, with repeated use leading to long-term vision damage or blindness. 

X-Ray Hair Removal

When X-rays were discovered in 1895, they quickly earned a place in the public imagination as a kind of invisible, modern force that could do just about anything. By the early 20th century, that fascination had spilled into beauty culture, and clinics throughout North American and Europe began offering X-ray hair removal as a painless, high-tech alternative to shaving or waxing unwanted facial or body hair.

The treatment worked by damaging hair follicles with radiation exposure, leading to hair loss over time. Though that was the desired effect, what was not yet understood was the cumulative harm of the technology’s radiation. Many patients developed burns, chronic skin damage, and in some cases, cancer decades later. Eventually it became clear that the medical risks outweighed the perceived aesthetic benefits, and by the late 1940s, X-ray hair removal services were no longer offered.

Tapeworm Dieting

At the turn of the 20th century, weight-loss culture was already established, if much less publicly advertised than today. But it reached new levels with the emergence of tapeworm dieting.  Marketed through advertisements and distributed through unregulated mail-order products, the diet promised effortless slimming by ingesting tapeworm eggs, critters dubbed “friends for a fair form.” 

Once inside the body, the tapeworm would allegedly hatch and go on to absorb nutrients from food, supposedly allowing the host to eat as usual while still losing weight. When a person reached their desired weight, they were meant to take an anti-parasitic treatment to kill the tapeworm and simply pass it from the body. 

In reality, tapeworms can grow up to 30 feet long and cause people to have diarrhea, vomiting, malnutrition, as well as abdominal problems and more serious health concerns; they can also cause complications upon removal. While a 19th-century patent for a tapeworm trap does exist, designed to be used after ingesting the critter for weight loss, it’s likely that many of the marketed products contained laxatives or placebos instead of actual tapeworms, and the trend was all but abandoned by the mid-20th century. 

The Evolution of the Parlor

The parlor’s journey from the monastery to the middle-class home mirrors broader changes in architecture and social life. In medieval Europe, most domestic life took place in a single large hall. Privacy, in the modern sense, was rare. Over time, however, homes — especially among wealthier households — began to develop specialized rooms branching off from that central space. One of these was the parlor: a smaller, more controlled environment for conversation, business, or receiving select visitors.

Early on, the parlor wasn’t always the front-and-center “best room” we tend to imagine today. In some regions, it functioned as a private chamber or even a bedroom tucked away from the main living area. Only later — by the 18th century and especially the 19th century — did it become firmly established as a formal reception room, often located at the front of the house.

That shift coincided with the rise of the middle class in Europe. As industrialization created new wealth, families increasingly sought to display their status through their homes — and specifically through rooms designed to be seen. By the Victorian era, the parlor had become a kind of stage set: a carefully curated space where the household presented its best self to the outside world.

What Was a Parlor Good For?

At its most basic level, the parlor was for receiving guests. Social calls — brief, often highly ritualized visits — were a cornerstone of life in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the parlor provided the setting. Typically located just off the entryway, it allowed visitors to be entertained without granting them access to the more private (and perhaps messier) parts of the home.

But the parlor did much more than host polite conversation. It was also a showcase. By the Victorian era, parlors were often filled — sometimes to the point of excess — with decorative objects meant to signal taste, refinement, and, above all, prosperity. Mass production made a wide array of goods available, and families eagerly filled their parlors with items such as porcelain figurines, vases, mirrors, decorative plates, and framed photographs, as well as ferns in glass cases, taxidermied birds, Japanese fans, peacock feathers, ornate clocks, and richly upholstered furniture.

Much of this work fell to women, who were typically responsible for decorating and maintaining the parlor. Their choices helped define the household’s public image, turning the room into a carefully composed expression of identity and status. Critics at the time — notably sociologist Thorstein Veblen — described this as “conspicuous consumption,” a term Veblen coined in 1899. But for many families, it was simply part of participating in middle-class life.

The parlor wasn’t always a stiff or silent place, however. It was also a center of entertainment. Before the advent of radio and television, parlors hosted a wide range of activities, from amateur theatrical performances to music and games. Families gathered around the piano to sing or dance; guests acted out charades or participated in parlor games such as Sculptor, where players froze into dramatic tableaux. More energetic pastimes — such as Blind Man’s Buff, in which a blindfolded player tried to catch others — could turn the carefully arranged room into a site of chaos. Word games, riddles, and shadow plays offered quieter alternatives, combining amusement with displays of wit and education.

And the parlor’s uses extended even further. In the 19th century, it was not uncommon for families to lay out the dead in the parlor for wakes or viewings, allowing friends and relatives to pay their respects in the home itself. Over time, however, these practices began to shift. As noted in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, changing middle-class ideas about death moved “a respectable burial from the family parlor to the funeral parlor,” unlinking mourning from the domestic space.

In all these ways — social, aesthetic, and even ritual — the parlor functioned as a kind of public-facing heart of the home.

What Happened to Parlors?

By the early 20th century, the parlor began to lose its place in everyday life. Part of the problem was practicality. Parlors were often the most elaborately decorated rooms in a house, but also among the least used. Maintaining a space that existed primarily for occasional guests could feel wasteful, especially as ideas about home life shifted toward comfort and informality.

At the same time, social norms were changing. The rigid etiquette that governed formal visits began to fade, and families increasingly preferred spaces where they could relax rather than perform. The very qualities that had once made the parlor desirable — its formality, its separation from daily life — began to make it feel outdated.

In response, a new kind of room emerged: the living room. The name itself signaled a shift in priorities. Rather than a space reserved for appearances, the living room was designed for everyday use — a place to read, talk, and unwind. Later in the 20th century, additional informal spaces such as family rooms and rec rooms further blurred the boundaries between public and private life within the home.

The word “parlor” didn’t disappear entirely, but its meaning narrowed. It lingered in business names — ice cream parlors, beauty parlors, funeral parlors — where it retained its association with receiving the public in a designated space. In homes, however, it largely faded from use.

What remains is the idea behind it: that a room can be more than just a place to sit. For centuries, the parlor was where households performed their identity — where they spoke, displayed, entertained, and even mourned. Its disappearance marks not just a change in architecture, but a broader shift in how people think about privacy, status, and the meaning of home itself.