Читать книгу Aromatherapy Workbook - Shirley Price - Страница 6

When researching the history of aromatherapy it is well to remember that the word itself was only brought into being in the early 20th century, and its strict meaning is a therapy using only the aromas (i.e. the essential oils) from plants, not the plants in their entirety (i.e. herbalism). Thus, much of the history connected with aromatherapy is in reality the history of the use of whole plants for medicinal use – essential oils, especially as we know them, came later. Indeed, there are cave paintings recognized as being many thousands of years old which may be interpreted as showing the general use of plants for medicinal purposes. Phytotherapy (meaning a therapy using plants) encompasses many different ways of doing this – from the use of the shoots as in gemmotherapy; parts, or the whole, of the adult plant as in herbal medicine, Bach Flower Remedies and homoeopathy to the use of aromatic plant extracts only, as in aromatherapy and its non-medicinal counterpart, perfumery.

The origins of aromatherapy are lost in the mists of time, long before records of any kind were kept, though it is believed that crude forms of distillation, which is the main method by which essential oils are obtained, were practised in Persia, Egypt and India thousands of years ago.

Aromatic extracts were, and still are, taken from plants in many different ways; expression, enfleurage, maceration, solvent extraction and the method par excellence for aromatherapy – distillation. Distillation was originally used mainly for the extraction of exotic flower waters, such as rose and orange flower; the amount of essential oil produced was hardly perceptible, as flowers contain very little essential oil.

No-one can say for sure whether the extraction and use of aromatic material began in India or Egypt – suffice it to say that in both these countries the use of plants was, for thousands of years, an important part of their culture.