Mrs. Brown was to be honored by her local PTA that very evening.
At the beauty parlor hours before the big event, she decided to go ahead and try a cosmetic change -- to permanently darken her brows and eyelashes. Her hairdresser had a new coal tar-based dye called "Lash Lure."
Riding home, Mrs. Brown’s eyes started burning. According to Teresa Riordan, author of Inventing Beauty, Mrs. Brown made matters probably worse when she got home by applying various treatments herself, one boric acid, another a topical made by her pharmacist, and then “yellow oxide of mercury.’
At the PTA banquet that evening, Mrs. Brown was so uncomfortable she left early.
In the ensuing days, the skin around Mrs. Brown’s eyes ulcered and blistered.
Nothing really helped.
Of the aftermath, The New Republic would write: “Her eyes are gone and the flesh around them is a mass of tortured scars.”1