René-Maurice Gattefossé

From SkepticWiki

René-Maurice Gattefossé is remembered today as the father of aromatherapy, and, indeed, the inventor of the word "aromatherapy". Unfortunately, very little else is remembered about him: he seems not to have had a biographer.

All sources agree on the story of how he discovered aromatherapy: according to tradition, he was working in the laboratories of the cosmetics firm owned and named after his family (of which he was to become head, and which is still in business today). Burning his hand, he doused it with the nearest liquid available --- lavender oil --- and subsequently noticed that his hand healed more quickly than he expected. This led him to investigate other possible curative properties of aromatic oils.

However, such sources as there are differ, crucially, on the date of this event. Most put it in the 1920s, but other sources place it a decade earlier, and represent him as using aromatherapy to treat wounds and burns of casualties in the First World War. This may be due to confusion with another prominent French aromatherapist, Jean Valnet, who did indeed use aromatherapy to treat wounded French soldiers, but during the Second World War, not the first.

Gattefossé's book Aromathérapie: Les Huiles Essentielles Hormones Végétales brought his ideas to the attention of a wider public in 1937. It was translated into English as Aromatherapy, and is still available in print today.