There are legends that Cleopatra bathed in donkey milk daily for her complexion. These legends have not been confirmed. Historian Adrian Goldsworthy, author of Antony and Cleopatra, believes that Roman Empress Poppaea (wife of Nero) set this bathing fashion 80 years after Cleopatra's death.[2]
Tincture of benzoin was also referred to as a 'milk bath' in the United States in the 1800s, which could in some cases be confused for baths of cow milk, also popular at the time.[5]
There are references to cows milk as a bath technique found in India in the 1800s in "Fifty-one years of Victorian life" by Margaret Elizabeth Child Villiers,Countess of Jersey.[6]
In the early 1900s, singer and Broadway star Anna Held was reported to bathe in milk daily. She was later quoted as having bathed in milk two times a week when living in Paris, finding it difficult to do so while traveling. Her husband Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. later reported to the press that she bathed in milk daily and set up photo shoots so that reporters could photograph the milk being delivered to her.[7]
A buttermilk bath was also a common historical bathing technique for show animals and remains in practice today (such as for pigs and dogs).[8]