The history of using essential oils and their aromas to improve health and well-being dates back thousands of years. Like today, patients would inhale or topically apply these oils, which were typically extracted from plants – from leaves to flowers to roots to bark.
But not until the 1930s was this form of therapy considered to have true potential in mainstream health care. That was when Rene Maurice Gattefossé, a French chemist who coined the word aromatherapie, wrote extensively about the properties of essential oils.
