Aromatherapy: the origins of a science

Since time immemorial, people have used aromatic vegetable oils to treat various ailments and ailments. Over and over again, as we read works by ancient Indian, Chinese, or Arab physicians, we find evidence that aromatic oils have always been an integral part of the practice of medicine to improve people’s health and spirituality.

Hippocrates is reported to have used the burning of fragrant aromatic plants to save Athens from the plague, in fact initiating one of the earliest known fumigations in history. We also know that Roman soldiers maintained their strength through regular massages and baths in fragrant oils.

However, it was the Egyptians who originated and perfected the use of aromatic plant oil in the ancient world. About 6,000 years ago, the chief physician and advisor to Pharaoh Zoser, Imhotep, was first suggested to use aromatic oils to bathe, massage, and embalm the dead. Regarded as the first known physician in history, Imhotep is also credited with building the first Egyptian pyramid – the Pyramid of Djoser, or the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, Egypt. As generations of Egyptian healers drew on Imhotep’s knowledge, they became supreme experts in his ability to treat patients using aromatherapy.

The science of essential oils as we know it today is believed to have reached the Western world during the Crusades. There is historical evidence that aromatic fumigations were used in the 14th century during the outbreak of the plague. People were also encouraged to hang herbs outside their windows and treat the floors of their homes with a mixture of rose water and vinegar. The popularity of aromatherapy grew in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it was only in the 19th century that scientists were able to put together a list of individual elements of the chemical composition of plants.

The research, which allowed scientists to identify the active constituents of aromatic plants, nearly wiped out the practice of natural aromatherapy. With the development of the pharmaceutical industry, aromatic plant therapy was rejected as an ‘inferior pseudoscience’ and replaced by artificial drugs, based in part on the elements it discarded.

A new page in the history of essential oils was written in 1920 by a French chemist, Rene Maurice Gattefosse. Having discovered, by accident, that lavender oil could quickly heal a burn, he proceeded to study other characteristics of aromatic oils and showed that many of them actually outperformed their pharmaceutical-based counterparts in quality, treatment efficacy, and lack of effects. adverse. Gattefosse is credited with coming up with the term “aromatherapy.” He was later followed by Dr. Jean Valnet, a French army surgeon born in 1920, who successfully used aromatic oils to treat soldiers’ wounds from infections on the battlefield during WWII. He had run out of antibiotics and decided to use aromatic oils instead, and to his amazement, it worked. Experts still refer to “Aromatherapie,” the book he published in 1964 as the Modern Aromatherapy Bible.

Aromatherapy finally returned to the mainstream during the 1950s, when an Austrian beauty therapist M. Maury reintroduced the idea of ​​using essential oils in massage therapy. He later established several aromatherapy clinics in Europe, including Great Britain, France, and Switzerland.