In A.E.W. Mason’s novel “They Wouldn’t Be Chessmen,” 1934, the author speaks of someone who had the wrong kind of skin ruining a string of pearls by wearing them.
However, someone else had the right kind of skin, and, by wearing the string for a month, cured or healed the pearls, restoring them to full luster.
Now, I can see how someone with really oily skin, or really acid skin, or just really dirty skin, might muck up the luster of pearls by prolonged contact.
But once that’s done, how in the dickens could someone else’s skin have the necessary properties to restore/revive/heal the pearls?
Was this an urban legend of the time, or is there some actual basis in fact?
I can’t answer your question, but I can tell you that one of the major characters in Rudyard Kiplings’ Kim was referred to as “the healer of pearls”, so this is (or was) apparently a thing.
This is kind of along the lines of what I was thinking. I have naturally oily skin, but I’m a male so I don’t wear pearls. The site also has other pearl-handling tips. From here.
If I’m following this, a person with oily skin ‘heals’ or preserves pearls, while a person with ‘acid’ (sweaty) skin damages them? So a pearl healer would be just a person with oily skin but not too sweaty.
Perhaps. The pearl “healer” may also presumably not use any cosmetics which would damage the pearl. Of course, there are obviously less fanciful treatments for damaged pearls than having a person serve as a polishing rag.
Pearls are layers of calcium carbonate (the same stuff the mollusc’s shell is made out of). Calcium carbonate is dissolved by acids, even fairly weak ones. Calcium carbonate is also what forms the limescale on plumbing fixtures and so on. Anything which you might use to remove scale would not be very good for a pearl. Pearls seem to be unusual among things used for valuable jewelry in being this susceptible to corrosive agents.
I can get how acid skin might damage a pearl… But how does anyone’s skin restore matter that has been eroded away? Do some rare people actually sweat calcium carbonate? I’m doubting it!
Do some people maybe sweat some other chemical that the pearl picks up and which bonds to its surface, “bridging over” the erosion? Sort of like rubbing it with wax, which could simulate healing it, but wouldn’t actually heal anything?
I expect you don’t replace material, you just polish out the damage, which is actually removing material, like sanding out a scratch in a wood surface.