Perfumes considered as secret remedies in France from the end of the 17th century to the Germinal Law

The end of the 17th century marked a decisive turning point for therapy and already foreshadowed modern pharmacy. 

The dreams linked to alchemy disappeared, and experimentation took a growing place in scientific research.
We are witnessing the birth of chemistry. Botany developed with the same speed thanks to the facilities of communication which will allow many explorers to enrich the medical material of all the products brought back from the Americas and the Far East.
A new era began, an essentially artisanal orientation will succeed an industrial activity which will not slow down. 

Undoubtedly, this industrial development will be extremely slow in pharmacy and rare are the apothecaries who manufactured specialties. These products, prepared in advance by developers who jealously guarded the formulas, were really secret remedies that could in some cases be harmful to health.

It is important to point out, moreover, that they were most often sold without control. In his History of Pharmacy in France, Mr. Bouvet confirms that custodies were rarely established with apothecaries. Among the custodians noted at Versailles in 1789, we find: the musician of the Roy, a shoemaker, three grocers, a perfumer, a lemonade maker, two surgeons, a potter, various private individuals and exceptionally a few apothecaries.

However, it should not be believed that apothecaries had completely lost interest in beauty products and had been the victim of permanent and unfair competition. One of the most remarkable pharmacists of the second half of the 17th century and who ranks among the most eminent men of science of his time is Lemery, the inventor of Talc Oil for skin care. We find many beauty products in the prospectus of Feret de Dieppe, where we can find Honey Water from England, Spirituous Lavender Water, different essences, etc.
At the same time, Drapiez, at the end of the 18th century, sold Eau de Cologne, Virgin Milk, Opiate for Teeth and the Queen of Hungary Water.

Eaux de Cologne have an Italian origin. They have been prepared since the 16th century in convents with plants from the Aurantiaceae family. It was not until the middle of the 17th century that they were sold in Cologne by the Farina family.

The formula of the real Eau de Cologne would be that of Jean-Paul Féminis, of Domodosola, invented around 1650. He would have entrusted his formula to the Farina Brothers whom he had known in Cologne. They joined forces and exploited the recipe under the name of Eau Admirable de Cologne.

Originally Eau Admirable and its imitations were secret remedies, used as medicines for internal as well as external use. They were said to be specific for many diseases and, later, they became alcoholic preparations with various flavors, having stimulating and tonic antiseptic properties.

Without going into the details of the virtues of this EAU (water), we can point out that:
“It can be used internally and externally. If used internally, the dose is 50 to 60 drops in wine, fountain water, or broth or other suitable liquor.”

“If we wanted to detail all the evils to which this liquor are similar, and specific, it would be necessary to detail almost all the infirmities to which the human body is subject, because we can almost call it universal medicine.”
“It is a sovereign remedy against all diseases of the body or brain and a marvelous antidote against all sorts of venoms and an excellent preservative against the plague”….

The printed document ends with:
“There would be no end to it if we wanted to report all the evils that this incomparable WATER has the virtue of preventing, or chasing away. Suffice it to say, there are few against whom she does not wield her power with that admirable quality that she cannot cause the slightest injury or accident, not even to a child in the cradle.”

I don't want to describe all waters to you, but I can name the ones that could be found in pharmacists' books:

• Eau Admirable de Cologne by the Rossi Brothers, 
• Eau de Cologne by Sieur Geroville, 
• True Inimitable Eau de Cologne by Durochereau rue Neuve St-Eustache 32 in Paris, 
• Eau de Cologne by Vourloud, 
• Eau Duchesne, a “medico-cosmetic, antispasmodic”. It is the pharmacist, Mette, 29, rue des Lombards, who prepares this water invented by Dr Duchesne. The leaflet indicates that it can be suitable for all diseases affecting the nervous system.

 
Part 3 coming soon !
If you want to learn more about the Perfume History, join Creezy Courtoy's World Perfume Heritage Master Class every first Monday of the month.   

Packaging is a really big issue if we desire to follow the New Luxury Code in protecting the environment, animal life and human health.  Many have asked me what "Sustainable Packaging" means. 
I always say:
​"To be sustainable, packaging should be refillable, reusable, recyclable or beautiful enough to be collectible." 

Refillable and Reusable
This is very complicated for perfume products as consumers are not always wearing the same perfume and if you consider perfume as a traditional gift for ceremonies, I don't think it is a real ecological solution. It will only work for hygiene or household products. 
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Recyclable
To be recyclable all the materials used (metal, glass, plastic...) have to be separable,  not always possible for most of the perfume bottles sold on the market today. All materials used must also have the quality to be recyclable.

Collectible
In the meantime, you can create packaging that no one wants to throw away:  create beautiful and amazing bottles which will become collectible packaging!
If you receive a perfume like this beautiful Poiret's perfume bottle, would you throw it away? 

Is your Packaging Sustainable?
What are the guiding principles? What are the roads to avoid? Take the test! Question yourself with this template.

L'emballage est un très gros problème si nous voulons protéger l'environnement, la vie animale et la santé humaine. Vous avez été nombreux à me demander ce que signifie "Emballage Durable".

Je dis toujours:
"Pour être durable, un emballage doit être rechargeable, réutilisable,  recyclable ou doit devenir un objet de collection."

Rechargeable et Réutilisable
C'est compliqué pour les produits de parfumerie car les consommateurs ne portent pas toujours le même parfum et si l'on considère le parfum comme un cadeau traditionnel pour les cérémonies, je ne pense pas que ce soit une vraie solution écologique. Cela ne fonctionnera que pour les produits d'hygiène ou les produits ménagers.

Recyclable
Pour être recyclable l'ensemble des matériaux utilisés (métal, verre, plastique...) doivent être séparables, ce qui n'est pas le cas pour la plupart des flacons mis en vente actuellement. Tous les matériaux utilisés doivent aussi avoir la propriété d'être recyclables.
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Objet de Collection
Mais en attendant, vous pouvez aussi créer des emballages que personne ne voudra jeter: des flacons à parfum de collection.
Si vous recevez un parfum comme ce magnifique flacon de parfum de Paul Poiret, le jetteriez-vous?

Votre emballage est-il durable?
Quel est le principe directeur? Quelle est la route à éviter? Faites le test. Interrogez-vous à l'aide de ce graphique.

By Jan KUSMIREK, IPF UK Chair and Sustainability Expert

What Do We Want? The word sustainability is on everyone’s lips. The first question we should ask is ‘what are we trying to sustain, what is our clear objective’ ? This is the key question.
Sustainability according to the definition by the Cambridge English dictionary is
‘the quality of being able to continue over a period of time’.
The earth has been here for millennia with different climates and geology, so has proven to be self-sustaining, self-perpetuating. Does it really need our help?
Essentially we must ask what we perfumers and therapists are trying to sustain before we deal with how we carry out this sustaining effect. If we want to use only natural materials we should have clear ideas why and the purpose of our choice. 
In the present century the term sustainability is most often applied to our Environment, so the Cambridge Dictionary goes further and adds:  
‘the quality of causing little or no damage to the environment and therefore able to continue for a long time’. 

What exactly is our environment?
The ‘our’ in the definition means us, humans, mankind. The environments for mankind which we inhabit differ around the planet earth. The soil quality, the water quality, even the air and climate depend upon locality. Largely the earth wide environment which most people know and experience is manmade, perhaps a city, a rural village, a home, an office but in only exceptional circumstances is it a wilderness which is not where people choose to live as a community. What I natural is judged as much by experience as knowledge.
Modern living and lifestyle are the desire of most of the world’s population witnessed by the ever demand for economic growth and migration.  The desirable model is the US, EU and now China and Japan.
Most of the world’s population consider themselves poor economically. Poverty is entirely relative. A small number are considered rich. Population growth particularly in Black Africa will continue to heighten the disparity between financially poor and rich. Contentment with economic circumstances is a very rare thing in the developed world. This cannot be ignored or pushed aside with platitudes for the reality is a world thus divided by the desire for more. 
There are huge differences in income between the richest and the poorest. Referring to this difference as a gap in income gives the impression that there are only extremely rich or extremely poor people. In reality, the majority of the world population, the global environment we create and live in, lies in between. It is a matter then of perception and in which, media and advertising play a major role in forming our view.
​
We could ask at this point where do people who use fragrance and its related industries fit into this scenario. Is fragrance an unnecessary luxury? Is it something of cultural value? Does odour have medical, wellness or health benefits?
As we are built as biological receptors of odour and as these odours colour our emotions we can be sure they at least have a role as sustenance for what we might call the soul.   
Turning to nature as evolved or created, fragrance is clearly part of our natural world and its presence overall, our planet could best be described as a fragrant earth. The sense of smell is closely related to reproduction and food sources in all loving beings. 
The world is what we live in and create, the planet, the earth beneath our feet, is what we live upon. Resultantly our environment, our world our planet is a political issue. Economic or wealth equality is no more than a utopian dream. It is the ‘moment’ that most people wish to maintain in wealthy communities, and an opportunity to join that wealth by the less wealthy. It is a dynamic and one that a majority of population wishes to maintain and sustain. This is the reality.
How then do we arrive at the present current fashion for ‘environmental studies’ and ‘sustainability’ pertaining to the viability of the planet we live upon and its ability to sustain growth and share wealth more equably? Our industry sits at the heart of a complex value chain, generating Value Added, jobs and consumer satisfaction around the world. Fragrance & Flavours is said to generate value of 32 billion US$ world wide but contributing heavily to the cosmetics industry worth 400 billion US$.

Agriculture or Biotech?
We are all children of the sun, the result of biosynthesis from the ability of plant life to create itself with simple sugars to edible, sustainable food.
Whether vegan, vegetarian or carnivore all this life was dependant upon sunlight. 
It appears mankind moved from hunting a gathering to agriculture about 12,000 years agon. The Agricultural Revolution or Neolithic Revolution, the shift to agriculture from hunting and gathering changed humanity forever. Essentially humans had to stay in one place and not move around. As the population increased mankind was forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production and agricultural practice was chosen.
Today we face the same dilemma as those far off times. We are still going to put our way of life and creature comfort over the needs of others and other life forms ahead of any other sustainable issues. History has shown us that such to be true by consecutive wars and revolutions.

Food production has been boosted by a variety of ‘inventions’ notably the introduction of synthetic fertilisers, herbicides and biocides especially since the 2ndworld War.
​Mechanisation too has led to the reduction of manual labourers and an increase in urbanisation and restructuring of society. Now we refer to Industrial Agriculture as the main means of food production.  
This major change had quite foreseeable consequences such as soil compaction, soil erosion, and declines in overall soil fertility, along with health concerns about toxic chemicals entering the food supply. Biodiversity also came to the fore as such agricultural changes also brought about a decline in wildlife from mammals to the insect world. 
The seeming solution was the introduction of Genetic Engineering.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can be defined as organisms (i.e. plants, animals or microorganisms) in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination. The technology is often called “modern biotechnology” or “gene technology,” sometimes also “recombinant DNA technology” or “genetic engineering.”
For some time the public were against the idea of such technologies and GM food in particular. Little thought was given to non-food applications. The EU has been opposed to the introduction of GM crops. Nevertheless, GM food is widely available More than 93 percent of the corn and soy planted in the United States is genetically modified in some way. Most of that ends up as animal feed, ethanol, or corn syrup — and corn syrup gets into lots of food as well as cosmetic oils. Cotton, sugar beets, and canola are also common genetically modified crops. Roughly 60 to 70 percent of processed foods in grocery stores contain at least some genetically modified ingredients.
It seems to me that in our perfumery and cosmetic world the term GM has been modified, softened by using the alternative Biotech phrase. Somehow this phrase has not been subject to as much scrutiny or concern by consumers as GM. 
​
Biotech is the big go to now, in making green claims for sustainability.
For over ten years, designer microbes have been used on an industrial scale to produce ingredients. The sustainable argument put forward is - clean technology and less reliance on petrochemicals and cultivated fields as food sources and no wildcrafting. 
Biotech ingredients are made by gene editing and splicing bacteria, algae or yeasts and moulds. In 2019, Europe emerged as the leading market for biotech ingredients in cosmetics and fragrances, accounting for around 37.46% share in the active ingredients market.  
One Spanish company advertises its products as ‘high added value natural active ingredients on an industrial scale through an innovative and unique process in the biotechnology field which obtains the real power of nature.’
​The real power of nature – I wonder what that is? As a vitalist myself it would normally refer to an energy force that diffuses all living things.
Consumer confidence in Organic growing methods have been concurrently growing based upon the idea of soil fertility and what seems to be a natural way of farming i.e., cultivating a living , microbe rich soil. Organic farming is widely considered to be a far more sustainable alternative when it comes to food production. The lack of pesticides and wider variety of plants enhances biodiversity and results in better soil quality and reduced pollution from fertilizer or pesticide run-off.
Enter the Carbon question. For years now Science has been proposing that climate changes in recent centuries has been brought about by man. To save the planet (see my opening paragraphs) we need to reduce carbon entering our atmosphere.

We need to change our way of life is the mantra!
​If we use more land for food, we have less land for carbon sequestration. The total greenhouse gas impact from organic farming is higher than conventional farming’ so runs the argument.
It is estimated that by 2050, the demand for food is going to increase by 59 to 98 percent due to the ever-increasing global population. A major challenge for the agriculture business (Agribusiness) is not only trying to figure out how to feed a growing population, but also doing so while adapting to climate change and coming up with adequate mitigation measures. So the question arises should we use land for luxury goods like fragrance.
The solution and direction of travel clearly is heading toward biotech. The cosmetic and fragrance industries has led the direction toward what might be termed a denaturalisation of ingredients for economic reasons. Interestingly the developed world, through technology, can foresee itself as fed and relatively unaffected by the resultant social structure changes. What will become of the 60% of the population currently engaged in agriculture when everything from vitamins to food comes from a laboratory in a developed country. 
​
Big players in the ingredient market, are well known to be leading the way into novel ingredients never seen in nature.
​To add to the biotech story we now add the phrase fermentation which is rightly described as a natural process. But is the end result natural, especially if the original microbe was itself biotech derived? At the sales end of the scale, face to face, fermentation is misused hiding the word biotech. Fermentation can be described as natural as in the case of wine or cheese but Covid might yet well prove to have its origin in a bit of biotech splicing and gene editing!
Aldous Huxley, in his sequel Brave New World Revisited wrote:   

Readers would relate strongly with his words.
When making a choice of natural materials in a perfume or aromatherapy blend or treatment a stand for what is natural in biology should be made. This choice runs contrary to the line of travel science has taken in its desire to preserve or sustain a world wherein nature is evidently sick by mismanagement and agribusiness. The solution for sustainability and social or political stability is currently sought and found in increasing regulations that disadvantage natural material producers. 
Tacitus wrote “In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.” Thinking that through it gives rise to totalitarianism through a backdoor of regulation seeking a parity and uniformity.
​
How easy it is for the hidden persuaders to convince that one can save the planet by synthesising materials.
​The fact that biotech saves valuable space, and all its other benefits ignores the profit motive and the loss of jobs and culture for those current producers. The pursuit of novelty in fragrance materials is all consuming and it is not aimed at sustainability which can simply become just a peripheral advantage for advertisement. 
The perfumers palette may have up to 1500 standard synthetic materials, another 500 or so naturally derived (under IS0 16128), 400 odd naturals (ISO 9235) and Cosmos naturals around 400 and Cosmos organic 300. There is no clear number list for biotech or contrived ferments.
It is certainly a big subject with many conundrums and personal choices to be made. Perhaps we all have an intuition as to what is obviously natural and what is not. Contradictions exist and compromises made. What we all need to avoid is being greenwashed into accepting contrived materials as natural by the imposition of regulations which favour synthesis as an advance to help sustainability when the truth lies nearer to the bottom line. 
​

Is your perfume strangely missing its rose fragrance? Does everything suddenly smell like nothing? Is your food tasteless?

Growing reports suggest that the loss of your sense of smell, a condition known as anosmia, is a common symptom of COVID19. 
Losing our ability to smell is one of the most mysterious symptoms of the coronavirus. 
According to researchers in Europe, more than 85% of coronavirus sufferers experience the problem. 
Most of these patients also experience a loss of the sense of taste, a condition known as dysgeusia.  This is logical, since olfaction plays an important role in the sense of taste. In fact, as much as 85% of taste can be dependent on olfaction.
When losing their olfactory sense, some people may experience depression, feelings of abandonment or insecurity.  
The objective of this book is to give you a better understanding of the importance of a little understood sense: the olfactory sense.  This sense has been neglected and rejected by our society since the 19th Century more focused on the senses of sight and hearing considered more “intellectual”.  

How, starting from a chemical molecule in our environment by an ailment, a flower or a fragrance, do we succeed in creating in our brain something called « a smell » which is linked to taste, memory, emotions but also to wellbeing and physical health. 

How a trauma, a cancer or a viral infection like COVID19 could be altering this olfactory sense? 
And finally, what treatments are available based on olfactory training? 

This book brings hope of renewal, putting back the olfactory sense next to sight and hearing to balance all of our senses.
Smelling and wellbeing: this will be the heritage and gifts we leave to our children and next generations.

About the author:
Creezy Courtoy is an historian and anthropologist specializing in perfume and olfaction. 
She is also Founder and Chair of the non-profit International Perfume Foundation. 
During her research the author spent a lot of time with gorillas to study the sense of olfaction.
She created « Les Ateliers des Petits Nez » Workshops for Little Noses is an educational program teaching how to preserve the olfactory sense for babies, to develop it for children and to restore it for adults. 

Preamble by Marc Luyckx Ghisi.  
He was, for almost ten years, adviser to EU Presidents Delors and Santer at the European Commission's Prospective Cell in Brussels.

Edited by Terry Johnson.

108  pages  10 pictures
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