History Of Aromatherapy

The history of aromatherapy stretches back thousands of years. Plants have been used to cure disease for as long as the human race has existed, perhaps even longer. Animals, for instance, have always sought out particular herbs or grasses when they are unwell - domestic dogs and cats still eat grass when they feel off-colour. Man has always been dependent on the nutritional value of the plant world. It was inevitable, therefore, that an awareness of how he felt after eating a plant would develop, and that a knowledge of herbal medicine would evolve. At first it must have been a case of trial and error - for many plants are poisonous - but, according to archaeologists, the paintings on the walls of the Lascaux caves in the Dordogne in France, dating back to 18,000BC, tell of the use of plants in medicine.

The earliest written herbal text can be claimed by the Chinese. The Pen Tsao, or Great Herbal (which is still in print) was compiled by Shen Nung, an emperor who lived some time between about 1000 and 700BC. In this, he listed over 350 medicinal plants - many of which are familiar today, such as poppy and cannabis - and remedies.

The Egyptians and Aromatherapy

The contribution of the ancient Egyptians to the history of aromatherapy is significant. While aromatic substances also played important roles in the medicinal prac­tices of the Hebrew, Arabic and Indian civilizations, the ancient Egyptians regarded aromatherapy as a way of life. At about the time that the Chinese were developing acupuncture, the Egyptians were using bal­samic substances in both religious ritual and medicine. Records dating back to 4500BC tell of perfumed oils, scented barks and resins, of spices, aromatic vinegars, wines and beers all used in medicine, ritual, astrology and embalming. When Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in 1922, many pots were found containing substances such as myrrh and frankincense (both derived from tree resins): these were used as much for medicine as for perfume, the two being interchangeable at the time.

Translations of hieroglyphics inscribed on papyri and steles found in the temple of Edfu indicate that aromatic substances were blended to specific formulations by the high priests and alchemists to make perfumes and medicinal potions. In the temples, aromatic substances like crushed cedarwood bark, caraway seeds and angelica roots were steeped in wine or oil, or burned, to perfume the air. The priests knew of the power of certain smells to raise the spirits of their congregation, or to promote a state of tranquillity. A favourite perfume was the famous kyphi, a mixture of sixteen different essences - including myrrh and juniper - and this was inhaled to heighten the senses and spiritual awareness of the priests. The incense used in present-day religious ritual serves much the same purpose.

In the 1870s, the Ebers Papyrus - seventy-odd feet of medical scroll - was discovered. It dated back to c.1500BC and listed over 800, mainly herbal, prescriptions and remedies. A scroll discovered slightly earlier, and called the Edwin Smith, dealt with medicine as well. From these scrolls, we learn that the Egyptians treated hayfever with a mixture of antimony, aloes, myrrh and honey. (Myrrh is still used for throat problems and coughs, by the way.) And they knew the basics of contraception: a blend of acacia, coloquinte (the pulp of the bitter-apple), dates and honey would be inserted in the vagina where it would ferment to form lactic acid - which is now known to act as a spermicide.

Aromatherapeutic principles were employed also in the famous Egyptian art of the embalmer. He knew of the natural antiseptic and antibiotic properties of plants and how these could be utilized in the process of preserving human bodies. Traces of resins like galbanum, and spices such as clove, cinnamon and nutmeg, have been isolated from the bandages of mummies. Such preservatives were obviously remarkably effective. Fragments of intestine examined under the microscope have been found to be completely intact after thousands of years. The remarkably preserved bodies extant in mummies, revealed by modern x-ray techniques, are a testament to the art of the embalmers, those early aromatherapists.

Another aspect of the Egyptians' use of aromatherapeutic principles was in cookery. They showed an amazing knowledge of the culinary value of aromatic substances. They would add spices such as caraway, coriander and aniseed to their breads of millet and barley to make them easier to digest. (Many spices and their oils are digestive in action, in fact, but recent research on caraway, for instance, has shown that one of its constituents, carvone, is extremely powerful, stimulating and releasing the gastric juices.) Onions and garlic were eaten often, onion bulbs invariably being found in or beside the tomb of a mummy as accompaniment into the next world. (Onion, of course, possesses potent antibacterial properties, and eating it daily can keep colds and 'flu at bay.) Garlic's bactericidal properties were as well known then as now: from an inscription on the Pyramid of Cheops we learn that every morning the slaves building the pyramid would be given a clove of garlic each to provide them with strength and good health. Today, garlic is well known as a powerful natural detoxicant, protecting against bacterial and viral infections.

The Greek and Roman Discoveries

If the Ancient Egyptians perfected the art of using the essences of plants to control emotion, putrefaction and disease, new discoveries of the medicinal power of plants continued to be made. The Greeks, for instance, developed medicine from a part-superstition to a science. Hippocrates, popularly known as the Father of Medicine, was the first physician to base medical knowledge and treatment on accurate observation, and ever since, of course, doctors have adhered to his principles outlined in the Hippocratic Oath. One of his beliefs was that a daily aromatic bath and a scented massage were the way to health, very much a central principle of today's aromatherapy. He was aware of the antibacterial properties of certain plants and when an epidemic of plague broke out in Athens he urged the people to burn aromatic plants at the corners of the streets to protect themselves and prevent the plague spreading. At this time, too, botanical knowledge was expanding, reaching its peak in the Historia Plantarum of Theophrastus, the so-called Father of Botany.

At the height of the power of Rome, it was 'immigrant' Greek phy­sicians and seekers after knowledge who dominated the medical world. One of these was Dioscorides, a Greek surgeon in Nero's army, who wrote De Materia Medica, a comprehensive textbook on the properties and uses of medicinal plants. It was he who recorded further details such as when a plant and its active principles might be at their most powerful. This in­disputable fact of plant life - that the principles are not always the same, depending on time of day, time of year, and state of development - is utilized by the essential oil industry today, nearly 2,000 years later. For in­stance, the poppy's yield in the morning is four times greater than in the evening. Jasmine's perfume and therefore its oil's powers are strongest in the evening; this is why jasmine flowers are still picked at night in India for their olfactory qualities. Dioscorides also first used a decoction of willow to cure pain such as that caused by gout (it is this decoction which has since become our most common analgesic, aspirin).

The Romans, although more interested in the culinary than the medical properties of plants, were botanically enormously influential. As the legions advanced over Europe, the soldiers took with them seeds of the plants they needed or could not live without, to cultivate in the countries they occupied. Many herbal plants in England - parsley, fennel and lovage, for instance - were introduced by the Romans. Many still grow in the greatest profusion in the wild along the routes taken by the soldiers, seeds having dropped by the roadside, or around old Roman settlements.

Towards the Renaissance

Although rational medicine declined in Europe after these early begin­nings, it still continued in China and India. The Arabs, whose civilization advanced from the fourth century AD, were also keeping the scientific spirit alive. An Arab was one of the founders of the famous medical school at Salerno, near Naples, and the Arabian physician Avicenna's book, Canon of Medicine, published in the eleventh century, remained a standard work until the mid-sixteenth century. Avicenna was also thought to be responsible for the invention of distillation as a means of extracting essences from plants, and many of his principles are still in use today. Great explorers and colonisers, the Arabs spread their knowledge throughout the known world. They were also great traders, and to a large extent were responsible for introducing many new plants from the East - spices in particular - which were used both in cooking and medicine.

The Middle Ages in Europe, stretching from roughly the sixth century to the Renaissance in the fourteenth century, was not an inspired time in terms of medical advance. A few lone voices were heard, though ­one of them was that of the thirteenth-century Abbess of Bingen, St Hildegarde, who wrote four treatises on medicinal plants. The works are still referred to today.

The Black Death, which hit Europe in the early fourteenth century, destroyed between a third and a half of Europe's population, contem­porary medicine offering no more advice than to carry aromatic herbal pomanders, or burn aromatics in houses and at the corners of streets. This was aromatherapeutic in theory, of course, but it was too little and too late.

With the Renaissance came the years of the great explorations, Christopher Columbus, unusually for his time, believed the world was round, and that he could reach the East - and its wealth of spices ­by sailing to the West. He landed in 1492 in what he thought were the East Indies - in reality the Bahamas. It was from the opening up of America that many new plant species were introduced to Europe. The stimulant coca leaves chewed by the Incas were introduced from South America; and other plants used medicinally by the natives and the North American Indians, such as the balsams or baumes (of Canada and Peru) entered the European pharmacopoeiae.

The European Herbalists

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the times of the great herbals in Europe, the British ones including those of Gerard, Parkinson and Culpeper. With the outbreak of plague again in 1665, methods of dealing with the disease had not advanced much from those employed 300 years before. Thereafter, though, knowledge grew in leaps and bounds, with the founding of the Royal Society in Britain, the plant classifications of Linnaeus, the explorations of Cook, and with many amazing medical discoveries such as digitalis, vaccination for smallpox, quinine and anaesthesia - the latter given the ultimate and Royal Seal of Approval by Victoria in 1853: 'We are having this baby, and we are having chloroform.

Alongside the growth of the scientific approach to medicine, though, belief in aromatherapeutic principles still co-existed, and by the end of the eighteenth century, essential oils were still widely used in medicine. But, as chemistry began to flourish as a discipline, and plant cures could be synthesized in the laboratory - cures which were stronger and faster in action - aromatherapy and its oils began to lose their place in the pharmacopoeiae and the whole subject began to be thought of as rather cranky.

Aromatherapy in the Twentieth Century

It was not until the beginning of this century that a French chemist and scholar, Dr R M Gattefosse, rekindled interest in aromatherapy - a term he actually coined and about which he wrote several books. He explained at length the properties of essential oils and their methods of application, with examples of their antiseptic, bactericidal, anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties. He related how, after burning his hand in the laboratory, he plunged the hand into the nearest receptacle which happen­ed to contain essential oil of lavender; he was astonished at how quickly the pain ceased and the skin healed. He continued to experiment with essential oils, using as his subjects men in military hospitals during the First World War. Essential oils such as thyme, clove, chamomile and lemon were used, with astounding results. Later the work was carried on by Dr J Valnet. Up until the Second World War essential oils of clove, lemon, thyme and chamomile were used as natural disinfectants and antiseptic to fumigate hospital wards and sterilise instruments used in surgery and dentistry.

Doctors used the oils throughout the war, and managed to prevent gangrene, cure burns and heal wounds in record time. This work was later translated into modern terms by Marguerite Maury, the French biochemist who trained me. She extended the research, bringing aromatherapy into the world of cosmetology, allying medicine, health and beauty. Aromatherapy is now widely practised by doctors on the continent - in conjunction with Phytotherapy (Herbalism) - and is referred to in France as medicine douce, or soft medicine, a significant appellation.

Around the same time that Dr R M Gattefosse wrote his first book on aromatherapy, Sir Alexander Fleming discovered the antibiotic penicillin. This was a 'natural' cure as well, being isolated from a culture of mould. Today, of course, natural penicillin is no longer used, for its constituents were identified long ago and it is now synthesized in the laboratory. Perhaps that is the reason why so many people have allergic reactions to penicillin, resulting in eczema and swelling: the artificial variety is considerably stronger than its natural counterpart.

And it is for this reason, I believe, that medicine is now turning once again to natural remedies. Using a strong synthetic drug to kill harmful bacteria is rather like cracking a nut with a sledgehammer, for not only do the drugs kill the harmful bacteria, they also destroy the beneficial ones present in the body. Natural remedies like using essential oils, on the other hand, may act more slowly in an antibiotic sense, but while killing off the bacteria or virus, they do not destroy anything else. In fact, they actually stimulate the body's immune system to strengthen its resistance to further attack.

Unfortunately, we have come to expect instant cures and think that the only medicines of value are made synthetically and come in pill form. Thus many find it hard to believe that the essential oils from plants are actually just as effective, if not more so. They may take longer to show results, but then illnesses do not develop overnight. There are no miracle cures, and a more valid option has to be the softer approach of something like aromatherapy.