Do parents still read to their young children before they go to sleep, I wonder?

I recollect that the promise of a bedtime story was often the only way to  get me to bed. Of course, there was no television and parents were far more strict than probably they are today. My young life was ruled by the clock. At 8 o’clock sharp in the morning, the gong would sound and woe betide me if I was not already seated at the breakfast table. Lunch was on the dot of ‘one’, and high tea was strictly on the stroke of ‘six’. My parents would dine later, when I was safely tucked away. Naturally, particularly in the summertime, it was quite irksome to be forced to bed at such an early hour, but all the pleading in the world would have no effect. However, to placate me perhaps, my parents would never fail to read me a bedtime story, and I would drift peacefully to sleep as tales of Peter Rabbit, Rupert Bear and Winnie the Pooh tumbled from their lips.

All of this came to mind when I received the other day a fascinating little book, with a very flattering note thanking me “for saving my life with your copious information”. Delphine Hollingwood (her nom de plume) began writing Life in Burrows at Brockden & The Hatching of The Eternal Nine Butterflies eight years ago. Following an operation to cure her epilepsy, she decided to finish it to prove she hadn’t lost her mental facilities as a result of the operation. The book is an intellectual fantasy tale about a year in the life of some endearing creatures.

I suspect that I was sent the book because it features, amongst many other colourful characters, a couple of care-free badgers, Billy and Benjy Burrowberg, whose laziness brings them an unexpected happy turn of events. Nevertheless I was taken particulary with Filbert Foie Gras, a flamboyant duck from France who is a very kind and caring soul whose Stock Exchange work forces him to learn meditation and relaxation. For those of a more holistic bent, the very caring and gifted squirrel with a healing touch which puts her out of favour with the establishment might strike a chord. Nurse Tuffy-Tail is always there to help and support all in need, both physically and psychologically, without question.

This is a cleverly written book. It contains the simplistic ways as well as the high-tech and commercial sides of life. The book comprises six stories that link together forming the whole book. Published by W.J. Lennard [ISBN 978-0-9556-0320-4], with charming illustrations of the characters by Joyce Souza, who has never even visited England from her native Goa, it is not only an insightful book for adults but also a series of enchanting tales for children. In fact, the perfect bedtime story for all the family! My read of the month.
An expert comments.
In response to my recent piece about Lily of the Valley, professional perfumer Jilly Fraysse kindly dropped me a line to confirm my view.

Perfumers have been using it for ages in their creations, but nobody has been able to use the true concrete for years. The reason for this is that to obtain the concrete you have to use enfleurage. This method is hundreds of years old, and as far as I know only one family still do it in Grasse. It is quite unique and usually passed on from one generation to another. It is a labour of love and very time consuming. If any commercial perfumer were to have access to it, it would be a house like Guerlain.

I was fortunate enough to have access to this concrete when studying in the 1970s, and there is no doubt that it was quite amazing. However, synthetics have taken over and a lot of them are very good.

Jilly was indeed most fortunate, because even Steffen Arctander, the author of Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin, admits, with much regret, that he may never have been faced with a true, uncut absolute of the lily of the valley flower. The odours of the samples and products with which he had the opportunity to work were all very far from the natural flower odour. It seems that it was common practice in France to extract the entire inflorescence of the lily of the valley and not only the individual flowers and, therefore, the absolute inevitably showed a high percentage of “green stalk” extract which affected the odour perceptibly.

It would be interesting to know what recollections of the fragrance Jilly has but, as she says, “Nature being as powerful as she is, I don’t think that the human sperm would be interested in synthetic replacement, and therefore the poor little sperm will never find the true scent.”

Enfleurage.
I am often asked by students who are new to essential oils what exactly is enfleurage?

Fifty years ago, Unilever, an international company with trading and manufacturing interests throughout the world, published a series of booklets to provide teachers with information for their pupils about subjects of which Unilever had special knowledge. I chanced upon one about essential oils the other day, and was interested to note that even then enfleurage, as a method of recovering essential oils, was dying out for social and economic reasons. Based on the physical fact that fat will absorb essential oils, the fat used for the enfleurage process has to be purified, odourless and unlikely to turn rancid. Recipes handed down from father to son in the South of France mostly require a mixture of lard and beef suet.

Enfleurage employs cold fat, and can be used only for flowers which continue to generate essential oils after they have been picked, such as jasmine and tuberose. A thin layer of fat is spread on a sheet of glass, held in a rectangular wooden frame, and a layer of freshly-picked flowers is strewn by hand on the fat. After twenty-four hours the flowers have yielded their oil to the fat and have begun to wither; the frame is then turned upside down and most of the flowers fall off, the remainder being picked off with tweezers. Another layer of freshly-picked flowers is now strewn on the fat, and the process goes on daily for anything from 14 to 70 days, depending on the type of flower and the success of the harvest. This seemingly small-scale process only becomes of industrial importance when a thousand frames are in daily use in one workroom alone.

In due course the fat in each frame becomes saturated with flower perfume, and is then known as pomade. The pomade is later repeatedly washed in alcohol while being mechanically churned, so that the perfume is transferred to the alcohol. The alcohol is evaporated under a vacuum in a cold still, leaving the concentrated flower oil. This is known as the absolute of enfleurage.

Enfleurage is a hand process, and calls for a rather large number of skilled workers in relation to the amount of perfume produced. Largely for that reason, the process fell into disuse, for scarcity of labour and rising wage standards made it uneconomic. Furthermore, in former years, families in the French flower-growing districts would go to the fields before dawn, in readiness to pick the blooms at sunrise, when they yielded the greatest scent; people are no longer willing to do this, and weren’t fifty years ago!

Chronic leg cramp.
I now realize, through a process of elimination, that I have one pair of shoes, which are particularly comfortable to wear, that tend to give me leg cramp at night. For the sake of comfort during the day, I have been reluctant to cast aside these favourites but, latterly, the discomfort at night has made me have second thoughts. Then, by chance whilst leafing through Aromatherapy for Health Professionals, I stumbled across a Case study by Shirley Price [Third Edition, p. 130].

Mrs. P had suffered with cramp in her calves and feet for several years, occurring most of the time at night. Her doctor took little interest and so, having heard about aromatherapy she thought that she might give that a go.
Having agreed that she would be prepared to apply an oil blend to her legs every night before retiring, the following prescription was made up for her: 16 drops European Basil (Ocimum basilicum L. ssp. linalol) and 16 drops Sweet Marjoram (Origanum majorana L.) in 100ml Grapeseed (Vitis vinifera L.).

She was asked to telephone if there was no improvement after a week. There was no phone call and, after a month, Mrs. P turned up for her next appointment to say that she had had no cramp at all for a week. Because of this, the frequency of use was reduced to once every 2 nights. Another month later, Mrs. P reported that she had still had no cramp at night, so her frequency of use was reduced to twice a week.

When Mrs. P went to Australia to live with her daughter, she took with her a 5 litre container of the blend - she didn’t want to risk being without it!

Although I am still a staunch believer in the use of wine corks down the bed for this affliction, Jan has banned them and so Mrs. P’s prescription could be just the answer, and my old shoes will be spared the dustbin.

Sweet Peas.
Whilst wandering around the garden this morning, I noticed in a corner a tangled mass of sweet peas (Lathyrus spp.) sprouting from a pot. To be honest, I am never really sure whether I like sweet peas because they remain at their best for only a few days when cut but, nonetheless, by then there is invariably another bunch to pick.
              
One of the first really fragrant summer flowers, the first few blooms are often short-stemmed, just as the last of the flowers will be, but the more blooms you pick the more there will be to gather later. Picked early in the morning or late in the day when it is cool and the plant is not transpiring too much, the flowers tend to last a little longer. Packed densely together in a water jug, or something similar, their colour and scent will enhance any room. There is nothing quite like their powerful, heady fragrance.

However, the choice of sweet pea varieties is quite overwhelming. There are single-coloured types as well as good old mixtures of colours and special ones bred for exhibiting. If fragrance is the first criterion then look for mixtures sold as old-fashioned sweet peas. Smaller, simpler flowers are compensated for by an interesting range of unusual colours and a powerful, true sweet pea scent. Although there is some difference in the fragrance of various colours and species of Lathyrus, the difference is not nearly as wide as in the case of roses, for example. The old-fashioned varieties have solid pastel shades, which are less aggressive than the screaming colours of the newer kinds.

The breeding of the sweet pea into the flower we know today is a fairly recent happening. The simpler, plainer types were quickly developed into frilled-edge blooms with several blossoms on each long, straight stem. The sweet pea Lathyrus odoratus L., which has been cultivated since ancient times for its large scented flowers and was the cut flower of the Edwardians, is the only scented member of the genus. Other types have quite small, pretty flowers and a wide colour range, but no scent.

Lathyrus species are cultivated all over the world in cold-temperate zones and in semi-tropical areas, but I am unsure where it originated although some suggest southern Europe. The islands of Bermuda were famous for their sweet peas, and probably still are but I have not visited for very many years, and a local Bermudan perfume industry claimed the rare use of Lathyrus flowers in their perfume production.

Undobtedly Lathyrus flowers could be extracted by the enfleurage method or by direct solvent extraction, which was occasionally used in Europe, but it is very doubtful that true and exclusively natural products from sweet peas are produced anywhere now. All the same, several claim that they have bought essential oil of sweet pea, and I’m not going to argue.

Still, what scent should we expect from sweet pea oil? The fragrance of the flowers recalls that of freesia, certain roses (particularly the dog rose) with a very delicate touch of orange blossom or hyacinth.

Sweet pea perfumes are accordingly based upon other natural perfume materials with the addition of various synthetics, e.g. tuberose, orange flower absolute, jasmine absolute, rose de mai absolute, vanilla absolute, terpeneless petitgrain bigarade, styrax products, benzoin products, tolu products, cinnamic alcohol, methyl cinammic alcohol, terpineol, linalyl anthranilate, phenylethyl alcohol, beta-gamma hexenyl acetate, hydra- tropyl acetone, phenylethylmonochloroacetate, etc. Be this the case, a water jug of freshly-picked flowers will suit me fine! 
Phytooestrogens.
Do you have a list of essential oils containing phytooestrogens which are contraindicated for use on people with hormonal cancers? asked Heather Penfold. I’m afraid I don’t, but Dr. Jane Buckle touches on the subject in Clinical Aromatherapy [2nd Edition].

Writing five years ago, she mentions that recent studies had indicated that phytooestrogens, once thought to be contraindicated in cancer, may actually reduce the risk of cancer and therefore be beneficial. However, until definite information emerges, she suggests that it might be prudent to avoid essential oils with oestrogen-like properties in tumours that are oestrogen dependent, such as breast, uterine and ovarian. Nevertheless, it is extremely unlikely that the tiny amounts of oestrogen-like compounds used in aromatherapy would impact cancerous growth.

As early as seventy years ago, Zondek and Bergmann wrote about the oestrogenic properties of phenol methyl ethers [Zondek, B. Bergmann, E. 1938. Phenol methyl ethers as estrogenic agents. Biochemical Journal, 32: 641-645].

Essential oils thought to have an oestrogen-like effect include Sweet Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare var. dulce Batt. & Trab.), Star Anise (Illicium verum Hook f.) and Aniseed (Pimpinella anisum L.), which all contain an essential oil dominated by phenylpropanoids, particularly the phenol methyl ether anethole.

Citral has been shown to have an oestrogenic effect causing prostatic hyperplasia (in rats), but Tisserand and Balacs referring to Lemongrass Flexuosus (Cymbopogon flexuosus (Nees ex Steud.) J.F. Watson) say that a mild hormone-like (oestrogenic) action may be assumed from the citral content but that as used in aromatherapy it is not known whether there will be an oestrogenic or androgenic effect [Essential Oil Safety]. 

Viridiflorol, a sesquiterpenol which occurs up to 15% in Niaouli CT. Viridiflorol (Melaleuca quinquenervia (Cav.) S.T. Blake), is said to have an oestrogen like influence in ovaries and testicles, and the diterpenic alcohol sclareol that occurs in Clary Sage (Salvia sclarea L.) has some similarity to the structure of oestrogen.

In vitro studies on rat skin indicated that some essential oils enhance the penetration of 5-fluorouracil (5FU). Peppermint (Mentha x piperita L.) increased penetration by 46 times and Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) by 60 times and so it might be wise to avoid using these two essential oils topically near the intravenous site during chemotherapy with 5FU.

Interestingly, according to the Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine by Thomas Bartram, there are more than 300 plants known to possess oestrogenic activity including wholewheat and soya products; he gives important oestrogenics as aniseed, beth root, black cohosh, evening primrose, fennel, helonias, hop, liquorice, sage, sarsaparilla, aletris.  

For an actual list of oestogen-like essential oils, I can do little better than recommend Aromatherapy for Health Professionals (Third Edition), pages 122 and 124.

Helonias & Aletris.
Knowing not a thing about aletris and helonias, I thought that I would take a closer look. I learn that both are known as Unicorn Root.

Aletrisfarinosa L., however, is True Unicorn Root, often also called Colic-root, Stargrass, Star-root, Blazing Star, Ague-root, Bitter Grass, Crow Corn, Bettie Grass, Devil’s Bit, whereas Chamaelirium luteum (L.) A. Gray is False Unicorn Root, or Helonias. Both are native to the USA. Aletris is found at edges of swampy or wet sandy woods, from Florida northward, especially on the seashore, whilst Helonias occurs in low moist ground east of the Mississipi. 

Aletris is a low-growing, spreading perennial herb, with a tuberous cylindrical, somewhat horizontal root. The white, bell-shaped oblong flowers bloom from May to August; the outer surface of these has a frosted appearance.

The fresh root in large doses is somewhat narcotic, emetic and cathartic; when dried these properties are lost. In smaller doses it gives colic in that part of the central abdomen below the region of the stomach, and a sense of stupefaction and vertigo. When dried it becomes a valuable bitter tonic and its tincture or decoction has been used in flatulence, colic, hysteria, and to tone up the stomach. Its most valuable property, however, is its tonic influence on the female generative organs, proving of great use in cases of habitual miscarriage and as a general tonic. Extraction Aletridis alcoholicum was the official preparation, but I failed to find anything more about it in the modern literature.

Helonias, on the other hand, is quite well covered. Rarely cultivated, it is generally harvested from the wild. It can, however, be propagated from seed. Helonias flowers in early summer and the root is dug up in autumn.

Helonias is a traditional Native North American remedy. However, there is some confusion about its use as a number of other herbs have shared the same name or had similar names. When researching this, I discovered it  shared several common names with Aletris, for example Starwort. It is thought that helonias was used by Native Americans mainly as a woman’s herb, but it may also have been taken by the Arkansas people for wounds and ulcers. The root was listed in the US National Formulary from 1916 to 1947, being described as a uterine tonic and diuretic.

Today, helonias is valued by Western medical herbalists as a key remedy for conditions affecting the uterus and the ovaries. It seems to have a “normalizing” effect on the female reproductive system, encouraging a regular menstrual cycle, and it is given to women with irregular or absent periods. Helonias also encourages the ovaries to release their hormones at the right point in the month. It can take some months, however, for the herb to have a significant effect on the cycle.

In addition, helonias is used to treat endometriosis, uterine infections, ovarian cysts and menopausal symptoms, and is reported to be useful for vomiting of pregnancy and threatened miscarriage. Nevertheless, the safety of helonias has not been established.

There is limited chemical information available, but it is stated to contain a steroidal saponin glycoside, chamaelerin, and another glycoside helonin. It appears that little research has been done on this interesting plant, and yet herbs such as ginseng (Panax ginseng C.A. Mey), which also contain steroidal saponins, have been picked over pretty thoroughly. Could it be because they mainly affect the male rather than female reproductive system?

A caution for cat lovers.
Wherever I shop there are burgeoning bunches of lilies for sale. However, how many are aware of the dangers for cats posed by lilies? I read that a couple had lost their cat recently as it had ingested lily pollen and suffered kidney failure as a result.

This danger applies to all cats; even the mere smell of liles can cause a problem in some animals. This appears to be well known to vets, but not to cat and plant lovers. Most instances where cats have been harmed involve cut flowers. It seems that cats closeted indoors with lilies are especially likely to ingest the pollen. The risk to cats roaming gardens where lilies are growing appears small.

Keep calm Mum!
Women who are anxious during pregnancy may pass some stress on to their foetuses, in the form of increased sensitivity to allergen exposure and perhaps future asthma risk, according to a study from Harvard Medical School [hms.harvard.edu/hms/home.asp].

In the study, researchers analysed levels of maternal stress and mother’s exposure to dust mite allergen in their home while pregnant. These were compared with cord blood IgE expression - a marker of the child’s immune response at birth - in nearly 400 infants.

They found raised levels of IgE expression in cord blood among babies whose mothers experienced higher level stress even when exposed to fairly low levels of dust mite during pregnancy.

Rosalind Wright, who led the study, said the research added to a growing body of evidence that connected maternal stress - such as that hastened by financial problems or relationship issues - to changes in children’s developing immune systems, even in pregnancy.

This further supports the notion that stress can be thought of as a social pollutant that, when ‘breathed’ into the body, may influence the body’s immune response similar to the effect of physical pollutants like allergens, thus adding to their effect.

Finally.....

Quentin Crisp, the English eccentric and writer with a famous aversion to housework, once observed that “after the first four years the dust doesn’t get any worse”: no scientist has ever investigated Mr. Crisp’s observation, but perhaps, when four undusted years have passed, the house-dust mite population reaches a peak level, and the mites promptly devour all newly arriving dust. I’m tempted to start the research myself!  




charles@essentiallyoils.com

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