The Healing Power of Essential Oils: Fragrance Secrets of Everyday use

Motilal Banarsidass . Hardcover. New. Essential oils—fragrant essences for health and well-being—are among the most popular natural remedies today. Rodolphe Balz has had intensive experience with the power of plants. For more than 15 years, he has been organically cultivating spice plants and healing herbs in the French Provence. The knowledge which he has collected as a result is now described in this unique compendium. It includes substantial and important information about the essential oils, how they work, and how to use them, making it an indispensable handbook for aromatherapy. The heart of this book is the index of the essential oils and their properties. More than 200 essential oils are de-scribed in precise detail here, followed by a particularly comprehensive thera-peutic index which makes it easier to put them to practical use. Further topics of the book are distillation processes that extract valu-able essences while protecting their powers, concentrations, chemotypes, signs of quality, quality control, toxicity, as well as the physical, anti-infectious, and resistance-increasing properties, to name just a few. The possibilities and limitations of self-medication, the aromatogram, and a great variety of application areas are also explained here. In constant contact with the most competent distillers and aromatherapists throughout the world, Rodolphe Balz continually tests and expands the great quantities of important information which he receives about essential oils. RODOLPHE BALZ was born in 1944 in Geneva. After his secondary studies and university education, he was awarded his degree in Sociology and Geography—the science of the earth. He became a teacher and, with a holistic approach, has attempted to understand human beings and our relationship to our environment. He has long been interested in medicinal plants and was introduced to their uses by Swiss and French naturopaths. For about fifteen years, Rodolphe Balz has been involved in the organic cultivation of aromatic and medicinal plants in the Drome Department at the foot of the French Alps. This work has led to the art of obtaining essential oils through plant distillation. At the same time, he has also privately studied and investigated the therapeutic value of plants and essential oils for the treat-ment of human disorders. This research has extended to include veterinary medicine and plant diseases as well.