Читать книгу Aromatherapy Workbook - Shirley Price - Страница 12

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.