Oh, the Magic of Perfumes!

It has come to light that the beautifully wrought alabaster vessels discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun, the Pharaoh of Egypt who lived in the year 1350 B.C., contained perfumes and materials for adornment, softening, and beautification. And when those vessels were opened it was established that the materials and perfumes within them had kept their fragrance and sweet scent throughout the three thousand years that have passed since their stoppers were sealed fast by the skillful Egyptian perfumer who gathered their mixtures and compounded their parts.

The elements of which those materials were composed were extremely dangerous and harmful, but the law forbids their use at the present time. Gone is the age when red earthworms entered into the composition of materials for adornment, softening, and beautification, as was the case in the days of the Romans and indeed before them; their place has been taken in the present day by substances extracted by a precise scientific method, whose purity and freedom from harm the competent authorities supervise completely — so much so that most of those substances now are not merely free of harm, but positively beneficial if used in measure and with wisdom. Moisturizing ointments, for example, help to smooth, cleanse, and soften the skin; and materials of adornment and beautification have, besides this, a powerful psychological effect, drawn from a person's sense that he feels health and well-being and shows their signs.

There are various methods of producing the essences of perfumes from blossoms and roses, but the most common at the present time is to extract them from the flowers by means of a dissolving agent such as ether, and then to distill them afterward.

Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, most perfumes were exceedingly costly, because they were extracted from natural sources. To grasp this, it is enough to know that we need twenty tons of violet blossoms to produce a single uqiyya of pure perfume essence, and that we need two tons of rose petals to produce a single ratl of pure perfume. But in the second half of the nineteenth century the age of industrial organic chemistry began: the minute elements of which many perfumes are composed were analyzed, and most of them were prepared by industrial methods — first in scientific laboratories, and afterward in the factories of aromatic scents.

Yet however much perfumes may be made according to the most exacting modern principles and methods, their heady fragrance, which takes possession of a person's feelings and refines his senses, depends now, as it depended in the days of Tutankhamun, on the skill of the one who undertakes their compounding and his genius in his art.