Читать книгу Aromatherapy Workbook - Shirley Price - Страница 15

By 1896 chemical science was becoming increasingly important. It was thought better to isolate the active therapeutic properties from plants and use them alone, or better still, to synthesize them – a much cheaper exercise, enabling large quantities of a uniform standard to be available (not possible with natural extracts alone). The drugs produced have proved to be very powerful and have an important role to play in modern medicine. However, synthetic copies of nature’s healing materials tend to be toxic and do not appear to have the same respect for living human tissues. They tend to produce numerous side effects (some serious) which then need treatment themselves and a vicious circle is begun. Many of the people in hospital nowadays are there not because of their original illness but because of problems caused by the side effects of the drugs taken (iatrogenic disease). The use of natural materials such as herbs and essential oils does not give rise to ever-increasing dosage, as is the case with synthetics, to which germs may often become resistant.