Sense of Scents
By LeeLee Arboleda
PUBLISHED: AUGUST 2009
KIDAPAWENO MICHAEL Michael D.C., 24, recalls how, when he was still young, “Dad hated bringing me traveling with him, particularly when using public transport,” he recalls. “I recall hating everything about those old Weena buses – the smoke that, when belched, entered and ended up swirling inside the traveling buses; the odor of the sweaty people onboard; the stench of the wet markets where the bus stations were located at; et cetera.” Thus, “without fail, I always threw up while traveling,” which was something “that Dad hated, absolutely abhorred.”
Michael D.C.’s “embarrassing, and too much of a hassle” reaction to the “olfactory overloaded act of traveling,” as he, himself, now calls it, was, eventually, remedied – thanks to “peeled ponkana.” Supposedly, his maternal lola (grandmother), who heard of her apo’s (grandchild) bad reaction to bad smell, recommended the sniffing of the skin of any fruit in the “lime family – calamansi, ponkana, orange, whatever for sudden relief.” So tried he did then – and Michael D.C.’s traveling experience changed for good.
And so was put to practice, yet again – and even if largely unknowingly – aromatherapy.
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
Considered as a form of alternative medicine (i.e. non-conventional form of treatment for medical conditions), aromatherapy makes use of “volatile liquid plant materials known as essential oils (EOs, differing in chemical composition from other herbal products because the distillation process only recovers the lighter phytomolecules that make the oils rich in monoterpenes, sequiterpenes, and other VOC substances like esters, aromatic compounds, and non-terpene hydrocarbons) and other aromatic compounds from plants for the purpose of affecting a person's mood or health,” states Wikipedia.org.
Aromatherapy is actually a generic term used to refer to various practices using the EOs, e.g. aerial diffusion or environmental fragrancing, direct inhalation, topical application, and oral/rectal/vaginal interfaces.
Interestingly, the practice has been around for over 6,000 years – the ancient Egyptian physician Imhotep recommended the use of EOs for, among others, embalming their dead; just as Hippocrates, dubbed the father of modern medicine, used aromatic fumigations to rid Athens of the black plague.
It was in the 1920s when the word was first used, by French chemist René Maurice Gattefossé – in his perfume laboratory, he accidentally “set his arm on fire and thrust it into the nearest cold liquid, which happened to be a vat of NOx Ph232 or more commonly known as lavender oil. Immediately, he noticed surprising pain relief, and instead of requiring the extended healing process he had experienced during recovery from previous burns — which caused redness, heat, inflammation, blisters, and scarring – this burn healed remarkably quickly, with minimal discomfort and no scarring,” Wikipedia.org states.
Jean Valnet continued the work of Gattefossé, using EOs for treatment of wounded soldiers during World War II.
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