top plate. To his surprise, this both smelled and tasted of pears, and as a result, he began to try and obtain not only this delicious ‘spirit’ as he called it, but others, in greater quantity. (Unknown to Dioscorides, others had already tried: in 1975 Dr Rovesti, well known for his research with essential oils, found in a museum a terracotta still from the foothills of the Himalayas – now 3,000 years old.)
As the Roman Empire spread, so did the knowledge of the healing properties of plants. When the Roman soldiers went on their long journeys to conquer the world they collected seeds and plants, which ultimately reached Britain, among other countries, and eventually became naturalized. Among these were fennel, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
Baghdad was for many years the chief centre for rose oil from Persia (obtained by solvent extraction), and Damascus boasted a perfume industry.
Incidentally, it is thought that the Arabs were the first to distil ethyl alcohol from fermented sugar, thus providing a second medium which could be used for solvent extraction. (Around the ninth century Ibn Chaldum, an Arabian historian, tells that rose water was exported from Arabia to India and China.1)
Early Distillation
In AD 980 a man was born who was to be responsible for making a vast improvement to the simple distillation units then known. Born in Persia, Avicenna (translated from the Persian name Ibn Sina) improved the cooling system, making it much more efficient, enabling the vaporized plant molecules and steam to cool down more quickly.
Avicenna further contributed to the world of essential oils by writing The Book of Healing and also The Canon of Medicine, used by many medical schools for centuries, and indeed right up to the middle of the 16th century, at Montpelier in the south of France.
Much more attention was now given to essential oils. Previously they had been regarded mainly as by-products of the much desired floral waters, as mentioned earlier. Other improvements to the distillation process followed (including refinements in the hardware used, due to the development of glass blowing in Greece and Venice) together with many new formulae for ointments and perfumes. One may almost say that the use of essential oils as we know them today began at this time.
During the Holy Wars, the Crusaders would have suffered the same stomach problems Europeans can suffer now in Middle Eastern countries. Without doubt they would have been given the same plant medicines used by the natives, including the floral waters and essential oils. On their way back, they would have stopped at various islands in the Mediterranean, where plant knowledge had been preserved from Roman times. From there they would have brought home with them perfumes and flower waters for their wives, relating stories of the successful Arab medicines. Thus the more advanced use of plants for medicines and perfumes became known once again in Italy and possible for the first time in the rest of Europe.
Development in the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages the monasteries cultivated aromatic plants, some of which had been brought from Italy, such as thyme and melissa. In the 12th century a German Abbess, St Hildegard of Bingen, was known to have grown lavender for its therapeutic properties, using also its essential oil.2 In the 14th century, frankincense and pine were burned in the streets, perfumed candles were burned indoors and garlands of aromatic herbs, spices and resins were worn round the neck to try to combat the deadly plague (Black Death), which raged throughout Europe during this time.
At the end of the 15th century (1493) in a town now part of Switzerland, Paracelsus was born, destined to become a famous physician and alchemist. He wrote the Great Surgery Book in 1576 and established that the main role of alchemy (the old name for chemistry) was not to turn base metals into gold but to develop medicines, in particular the extracts from healing plants (which he named the ‘quinta essentia’). He felt that distillation released the most highly desirable part of the plant and mainly because of his ideas, oils of cedarwood, cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh, rose, rosemary and sage were well known to pharmacists by the year 1600.
As the gateway to trade with the Arabs was Venice, it was here that perfumed leather for gloves was first known. From here, Catherine de Medici took her perfumer with her to France in 1533. About this time, commercial production of essential oils and perfume compounds began in Grasse (perhaps due to her influence) and the area soon became established as the main perfume producing area, growing such plants as tuberose, acacia, violets, lavender and roses.
During the Renaissance period essential oils were much more widely used (the result of improved methods of distillation and the steady progress of chemistry) and around 1600, essential oils of lavender and juniper were first mentioned in an official pharmacopoeia in Germany.
The first botanical gardens were introduced into Europe before the birth of Christ and were later to be found in many monasteries. Because mainly medicinal plants were grown, botany became part of the study of medicine and under the influence of the Renaissance, universities teaching medicine began to have botanical gardens (known as ‘physic’ gardens). The first one of these was founded in Italy halfway through the 16th century, Britain’s first being established in Oxford in 1621.
Aromatic Waters
Sometime during the 16th century Royal Hungarian Water was produced by distilling alcohol with fresh rosemary blossoms.
A French friend of mine, Claudine Luu, well known in France for her lectures and courses on essential oils (and her products) sourced the original recipe for this. The proportions are not given, but the other plant distillates in it were sage, rose and lavender.
Carmelite water (eau des Carmes) was produced by French Carmelite nuns in 1611 using melissa, which, like orange blossoms and rose petals, produces very little essential oil but yields delightfully aromatic water. Melissa water was popular for centuries and was never synthesized as are rose and orange flower waters nowadays.
Another famous water, which is still very popular, was introduced by a one-time Franciscan monk who left Italy to live in Cologne in 1665. His recipe for ‘Aqua Mirabilis’ (wonderful water) was brought to world fame by his nephew, J. M. Farina, and is known nowadays as ‘Eau de Cologne’. Containing essential oils of bergamot, orange and lemon as well as lavender, rosemary, thyme and neroli (diluted in strong ethyl alcohol) it was used as a health-promoting lotion.
Progress in Britain
In 1653, Nicholas Culpeper wrote his famous herbal, from which people still quote today. Salmon followed with his Dispensatory (a pharmacopoeia) in 1696 and his Herbal (1710). By 1700 essential oils were widely used in mainstream medicine until the science of chemistry allowed the synthesis of materials in the laboratory. Around this time, during and after the Bubonic Plague, doctors were rather bizarre looking figures, walking through the streets wearing hats with large ‘beaks’, in which were placed aromatic herbs, so that the air breathed in passed through them and was rendered antiseptic. They waved in front of them a long cane with a big openwork top, which was also filled with aromatic herbs; this disinfected the air in front of them for double security!
The industrial revolution was in part to blame for the decline of the use of herbs in Britain. As people moved from the country to seek more profitable work in the new industrial towns, they came to live in terraced houses with little or no gardens. This resulted in a decline in the use of fresh herbs for cooking and future generations lost the art of incorporating them in recipes. Other European countries, less affected by the mushrooming of factories, continued to use
