On 25/1/07 23:00, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:28:37 +0000, Sacha
wrote:

Thinking of the Frances Mayes books, as I was a while ago, I remember her
writing that her husband took a pudding spoon of olive oil every morning,
presumably for the benefit of his internal clockwork. And I think it was
she who wrote that Italian women used to use it as skin nourishment. Has
anyone here any experience of either? I rather like the idea of a much
cheaper version of Clarins in my kitchen cupboard!


http://www.alcasoft.com/soapfact/history.html
"While the Romans are well known for their public baths, generally soap was
not
used for personal cleaning. To clean the body the Greeks and then the Romans
would rub the body with olive oil and sand. A scraper, called a strigil, was
then used to scrape off the sand and olive oil also removing dirt, grease, and
dead cells from the skin leaving it clean. Afterwards the skin was rubbed down
with salves prepared from herbs."

I've got some shower stuff composed of sea salt, oil and rosemary - nothing
new under the sun, obviously!
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)