FRAGRANCE IN THE NATURAL ORDERS 205 FRAGRANCE IN THE NATURAL ORDERS E. S. MAURER, F.L.S.* A lecture delivered before the Society on l•Sth March 1960 Acquaintance with floral fragrance is perhaps limited to •e familiar scented denizens of our parks and gardens, but there is also a vast range of liffie-known tropical exotics to be considered. The Natural Orders provide a means whereby genera may be initially grouped into scented, olid or inodorous sectors, but the botany texts are very meagre on this aspect, and it is kom the many ancillary source-books that opinions on floral kagrance have been finalised. RIGHT AT the outset, and to the best of my knowledge, there is not available any book which deals solely with the fragrance of wild and cultivated, temperate and tropical zone flowers within the convenient botanical sectors which comprise the Natural Orders, and it is therefore necessary to give you some idea of the type and magnitude of the available ancillary literature regarding flowers and gardens which has formed my source-books, for in reality it is the 'location' of Fragrance within these Natural Orders which has been the purpose of a study now extending over 5 years. HISTORICAL We must touch, at least very briefly, upon the historical background in order to glean some idea of when and where written records were made regarding scented flowers and fragrant foliage, for although the origin of per fumus is familiar, we may note in the recipe for incense given to Moses (Exodus, 30), that the ingredients are directed to be compounded 'after the art of the apothecary.' Apotheke was the Greek term for a warehouse for pharmakon (drugs) and aromatos (spices) and also a convenient place to macerate fragrant materials in oils and fats, and in this connection it is interesting to observe that the Latin dictionary designates a perfumer as an unguentarium, and the Greek a myropolan, for myron signifies a fragrant ointment--a 'spikenard'--made from sundry species of Myrtle. The Apollonian hierarchy was represented by Asclepias, the Greek god of *Three Hands Products Ltd., London, N.15

206 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS healing, his daughter Hygieia, the goddess of hea!th, while Cheiron, the Centaur, was called by Homer the 'sire of pharmacy'. The knowledge and wisdom of this trio would appear to have been epitomized in the Lexicon Botanicurn of Hippocrates, which was extended by Theophrastus and later provided Dioscorides with the foundation for his 'Greek Herbal.' But to Galen, circa 130 B.C., is due the recognition of simple herbal medicines, known to this day as the Galenicals. We are also particularly indebted to the school of Arabian physicians, for it was these people who knew the properties of, and gave the generic names to the flowers and herbs of the field, and the fragrant gums and spices indigenous to what was then a fertile Arabia. This brief sketch reminds us of the ages-old association between per- fumery and pharmacy we may also observe the western drift of Grecian and Arabian herbal lore, and we must particularly recognize the influence of the knowledge, skill and records of the monks and the subsequent monas- tery gardens to which were introduced upwards of 40 sweet aromatic herbs such as rosemary, sage, thyme, many mints, cumin, dill and fennel, as well as many 'herbs of physic,' such as chamomile, tansy and wormwoodm for the Benedictines were the rural physicians of that era. In passing, we may perhaps note that at one time in the East, anise, with other herbs, was used in part payment of taxes, for in Matthew 23 it is recorded that: 'Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin.' It is also important to observe the date of 1560, marking the dissolution of the monasteries, whereby their possessions were wsted in the crown, and the archives either passed into private holding, or were ruthlessly destroyed. Historically, the Renaissance began circa 1450 and ended about 1600, and we may particularly note that the first book printed from movable type was the '42-line' Bible, produced at Mainz in Germany in 1456, while a little later quite a number of wood-cut illustrated domestic herbals, medical treatises and popular works on gardens began to appear from Amsterdam. To the student of Flora Historica there are, for that period, several out- standing names, the dating and title of their works being very significant, namely-- John Gerard, The General History of Plants, 1597 John Parkinson, A Herbal of large extent, 1629 Nicholas Culpepper, The British Herbal, 1655 John Evelyn, The Complete Gardener, 1699. These worthies, as well as many others, can perhaps be presumed to be adequately represented in the 70 or so English versions of the History of Pharmacy and Medicine, but regarding herbs and flowers and scented gardens, I shall have occasion to mention several times the writings of Miss E!eanour Sinclair Rohde, for in her Anthology, "The Old World Pleasaunce" 1925