Makeup was a pretty touchy subject during the 19th century. The Oxford Student reports that Queen Victoria herself was very critical of its use, calling makeup vulgar and impolite because of its association with sex workers. Then again, there was a significant trend for "natural" beauty, which could be pretty unforgiving if someone had acne, a scattering of freckles, or even a bit of a sunburn. By the end of the 19th century, many people began wearing makeup again anyway, but it came with a cost. Face creams and other cosmetics could contain arsenic and lead. According to The Cut, lead-based cosmetics made skin severely dry and lead to intense abdominal pain before ultimately killing long-term users.

Even if someone committed to going au naturale, cosmetics-wise, they still got terrible advice. According to Atlas Obscura, advice writers like S.D. Powers recommended caustic ammonia to encourage hair growth or, confusingly enough, to remove unwanted hair. For those who wanted thicker eyebrows, Powers recommended no less than mercury. For fashionably dilated eyes, a lady might use drops containing deadly belladonna, though they could also go blind if they went too heavy on the stuff. 

Even opium was floated as a solution for skin problems, according to The Ugly-girl Papers, though readers would have known it was addictive unless, as Powers writes, you simply took a bath to dispel that pesky dependency.

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