History
A more realistic timeline may start in the 600s of the Common Era, about 1,400 years ago. Essential oils were then allegedly distilled in Azerbaijan , next to the Caspian Sea and formerly part of the Soviet Union. The Persian invention of the coiled cooling pipe (formerly a straight pipe was used) 500 years later greatly improved the effectiveness of distillation. It is said essential oils became available to consumers in the apothecaries of the 1500s.
The modern beginning of aromatherapy is usually said to be an accident in a French perfume laboratory during the 1920s. Chemist René Maurice Gattefossé inadvertently set his arm on fire. After he thrust the arm into the nearest cold liquid, which happened to be lavender oil, he noticed the healing was rapid with relatively little pain and no scarring. He was the first to use the word “aromatherapy.” The word began in a 1928 article he wrote promoting using essential oils in their whole state without breaking them down into constituent parts. Nine years later, in 1937, he wrote what is advertised as the first book on aromatherapy.
During World War II Dr. Jean Valnet, a French army surgeon, used essential oils to treat soldiers who had gangrene.
Marguerite Maury, variously described as a cosmetics chemist, esthetician, or cosmetologist, is credited with being the first to use essential oils in massage. This occurred in the 1950s.
The first book in English about aromatherapy was by Robert B. Tisserand and was published in 1977.
Aromatherapy did not reach the United States until the 1980s.
This is the standard mythology of modern aromatherapy but it is unclear who put the aroma into aromatherapy—who first sought to heal through the odor of essential oils as opposed to the contact of the essential oils’ properties with the skin. It is apparent that Gattefossé did not think the smell of the lavender oil healed his arm. Did he later make the jump from the physical healing properties of lavender oil to the aromatic benefits of that oil?
While who in the modern era first used the odor of aromatherapy to heal is perhaps as hazy as the rising scent, this points out that the word is a bit of a misnomer. The technique of aromatherapy does not always depend on smell. It has been suggested that a more accurate name for the practice would be “essential oil therapy.”
On the other hand, it is argued that essential oils really aren’t “oils” at all. This would make essential oil therapy as misleading a name as aromatherapy. Whatever the name’s shortcomings, the word aromatherapy is long-lived, now celebrating its 80th birthday.