Pharmaceutical formulas : a book of useful recipes for the drug trade, comprising formulas for toilet preparations and specialties and preparations for the hair, dentrifices, perfumes, household and culinary requisites, beverages, antiseptics and disinfectants, inks, varnishes, confectionery, medicinal compounds, and many other preparations related to the art of pharmacy collated chiefly from The chemist and druggist and The chemists' and druggists' diaries / with annotations by Peter MacEwan.

Date:: 1898

Credit: Pharmaceutical formulas : a book of useful recipes for the drug trade, comprising formulas for toilet preparations and specialties and preparations for the hair, dentrifices, perfumes, household and culinary requisites, beverages, antiseptics and disinfectants, inks, varnishes, confectionery, medicinal compounds, and many other preparations related to the art of pharmacy collated chiefly from The chemist and druggist and The chemists' and druggists' diaries / with annotations by Peter MacEwan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

161/710 page 149

uo ' PERFUMES xHE manufacture of perfumes is one of the oldest arts known to mankind, and one which retains all its ancient mystery. Science has not simplified perfumery much, nor Chemistry relieved it of empiricism, although synthetic perfumes promise to have some influence in this direction. We know by tradi- tion and by practice how to soften and enrich distinctive o ours, ut whether the results are due to mere neutralisation of one odour, or a part of it, by a different one, or to the formation of new molecular compounds, is beyond our ken One fact stands out prominently. The finest perfumes are those which are prepared direct from the fresh flowers by simple absorption in a fatty medium. These are represented in the floral pomades which constitute the backbone of the perumers art. Simple solutions of essential oils do not possess the same fragrance. This we appreciate when we compare an essence of rose made from rose pomade with one made by dissolving otto of rose in spirit. The former has a wteThJr r latter never attains by age or dilution. Whether, in the process of distillation some principle of the rose is lost or destroyed we need not inquire. The fact re- fromfll ^ atrhand fiXCd °ilS eX‘raCt m°re delicate P^mes rorrr flowers than we can get by water-distillation, and upon M baSed a ;mP°rtant branch of the perfume industry. ]' • attack states that in the manufacture of floral pomades as pursued in the South of France, the fat employed is a rmxture of lard and suet, both of which are refined Ld purified during the winter months, and kept stored away in wten .'he 7 “f reqUired f°r “Se the ™ When the flower-harvest comes round i cwt. of the fat is

Licence and re-use

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