Khol

What is Khol

Kohl, or kohl kohl (Arabic: كحل, Kuhl) is a mineral powder composed mainly of a former lead mixture as galena, sulfur and animal fat or burnt wood or bitume1 used for makeup and / or treat the eyes.

Kohl can be black or gray as it contains mixtures.

If kohl is now theoretically used without toxic lead as a cosmetic to highlight around the eye, severe lead poisoning are still observed following the use of kohl containing sulfide plomb2,3,4 5. The Kohl also seems to have once been primarily a medicinal purpose, toxicity having biocidal function. He even may have been the first antibiotic compound chemical molecules synthesized by man, there are about 4 000 years

Khol History

The Egyptians used as eye drops to prevent and relieve eye infections, and perhaps also to protect the eyes from strong refractions of light desert.

Pharaoh and his subjects also appear to have been won over by the aesthetic effect conferred kohl in their eyes, and men and women used it for makeup. We find many examples in ancient Egyptian iconography.
Over the centuries, Kohl has continued to be used by Arabs and Berbers.

Khol Features

In antiquity lead appears to have been used in various forms not found in nature, as composed of cosmetics, as protection against evil spirits and for its biocidal properties (toxicity also applies to many microbes).
The Greco-Roman manuscripts (one hundred years BC) already reported two unnatural lead salts synthesized ago 4000 years for makeup or to treat eye or face. These compositions could be confirmed by analysis of eye remains found in tombes7, including Egyptian; these shadows were most often lead-based (black mixture of lead sulfide obtained by grinding natural galena and white substances, natural or synthesized from particular lead salts (laurionite particular, a lead chloride that the first "chemists" of ancient Egypt already knew synthesize stirring in warm water litharge and sodium chloride).

 In drawing off the water and then soda, they practiced a balancing movement promoting laurionite which precipitated the bottom of the mixing tank.
The texts of Greek doctors (as Dioscorides) and Roman (Pliny) emphasize the critical role of these substances for the care of the eyes. A study in 2010 montré6 that very low doses of lead applied as laurionite to skin cell does not kill them, but in response induced production by a cellular enzyme nitric oxide, a molecule known to activate the system immune (natural bactericidal).
The lead-based cosmetics slowly freed of Pb 2+ ions (lead acetate) in the skin. Some of these ions migrate to the eye through the lacrimal fluid mainly. Even at low doses, lead acetate is toxic, but 'very low dose', that is to say at infinitesimal concentrations (sub-micromolar, 0.2 micromol enough), lead acetate ions show in vitro that can strengthen the immune defense cells without killing them, which was probably useful in cases of ocular bacterial infection.