Читать книгу Aromatherapy Workbook - Shirley Price - Страница 11

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.