Aromatherapy - Ancient History Or Happy Accident

AROMATHERAPY -

Ancient Science or Happy Accident...

The word, aromatherapy, was first used in the 1920’s by the French chemist René Maurice Gattefossé, who devoted his life to researching the healing properties of essential oils. While working in his perfume laboratory, he accidentally set his arm on fire and thrust it into the nearest cold liquid, which happened to be a vat of lavender oil. Surprised, he noticed immediate pain relief, and his burn healed remarkably quickly, with minimal discomfort and no scarring.

In our modern world, the practice of using aromatherapy oils has become one of the most widespread of the gentle healing arts. It is based on the promotion and maintenance of general wellbeing through the use of natural oils obtained from an extensive variety of natural botanical ingredients.

However, from the most ancient times, plant flowers, berries and leaves have been used in healing the body, and twigs and branches burnt for their scents in order to influence the emotions or senses. In Egypt, China, India, Greece and Rome, it is known that aromatics were used for spiritual, cosmetic and medicinal purposes, as testified by the evidence of cave paintings, handed-down traditions, records and prolific writings.

Traces of plants with known medicinal properties have been found in the burial places and living sites of early human settlement, often being connected with religious or superstitious practices, the oldest recorded reference to plants dating back to 10,000BC. Early Man probably discovered that certain leaves and berries could help make wounds heal, or that other leaves and roots helped to ward off sickness. Perhaps certain twigs when placed on the fire would make people feel drowsy, excited, or even give them “mystical” experiences.

The Egyptians used aromatics for medicinal and cosmetic purposes in 3000BC, and also of course for embalming their dead.

As well as pills, powders and purees from a wide selection of trees and plants, they made medicinal cakes, ointments and pastes, using such things as aniseed, castor oil, coriander, cumin and garlic, to name but a few.

Babylonian doctors made records of their prescriptions on clay tablets, giving careful details of when the remedies should be prepared and taken.  In Babylonian gardens it was possible to find garlic, fennel, saffron, thyme, caraway, coriander, juniper, myrrh and roses, many of which are identified with the use of essential oils in today’s society.

Ancient Greece played an important part in medical history, the most famous of all ancient Greek doctors being Hippocrates, who recommended aromatic baths and massages to promote and maintain good health. By 1200BC Greek physicians were trying to find natural explanations for illness - Hippocrates’ himself made references to narcotics such as opium, mandrake and belladonna -  and the ever abundant commodity of olive oil was used to absorb the aromas from flowers and herbs for both cosmetic and medicinal purposes.

Galen, another Greek doctor who worked in Rome around 200BC, wrote a great deal about plant medicine, and it was he who invented the original “cold cream” which formed the prototype of virtually all ointments in use today. Among this abundance of writings by Greek physicians working in ancient Rome, we also find De Materia Medica, a five volume collection by Dioscorides detailing the attributes of medicinal plants, focusing on the “preparation, properties, and testing of drugs" – a work that became central to pharmacological study for the next 16 centuries, and in fact provides much of our present knowledge of medicinal herbs.

In fact, the more we research the origins and development of aromatherapy, the more we must realise just how much we make use of some truly ancient methods in our modern world.

It is only with the passage of time that our scientific understanding has become increasingly confident in the part played by natural herbs and oils in our general state of wellbeing, and they are now used extensively for various “aromatherapies” - for all-over body massage, for reflexology, for bath soaks and shower gels, as well as just as a therapeutic home fragrance.

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