The history of body wraps

There is evidence of the use of poultices for the absorption of toxins and poisons even in pre-historic times from illustrated reference to the use of what must have been herbs and mosses. We know from hieroglyphs that Cleopatra used Nile clay poultices as skin treatments as well as her asses milk baths. In medieval times the mustard poultice was a common treatment for skin infections but the advent of chemical medicine at the turn of the 20th century saw the decline of many traditional therapies in favour of more modern pills and potions.

For a while conventional medicine denied that the epidermis was in any way porous and dismissed virtually all skin treatments as superficial. Most recently however this has been exposed as nonsense and the use of medicinal patches for all sorts of treatments, from nicotine addiction to pain relief, by the application of skin patches is common place and effective. With the use of penetration enhancers a number of medicines are already being administered in this way instead of by injection.

Beauty treatments like face masks and body wraps have relied on clay or mud poultices since Cleopatra’s days and many have been recently been enhanced for use in beauty salons. Salon body wraps were first introduced in 1960’s in USA and successfully provided instant visible inch loss to any part of the body within an hour or two.

Indeed a TV test first broadcast in the 1970s on the popular American Phil Donahue Show vividly demonstrated the inch loss capabilities of a full body wrap and the process became ingrained in the beauty culture of America and inevitably came to Europe shortly thereafter.

Unfortunately body wraps produced exclusively for salons were messy and cumbersome. Furthermore relatively few people could afford such luxurious treatments in beauty salons, whilst others wanted to continue treatments from the comfort of home and thus the home wrap was born.