Abstract
THIS collaborative work has behind it the resources and experience of Fritzsche Brothers New York, well known as producers of essential oils. Dr. E. Guenther, a vice-president of the firm, discusses the technique of essential oil distillation, from the broadest principles of the binary distillation diagram down to such details as the effect of pressure differential within the still in liberating the oil from the plant cells. Enfleurage and solvent extraction, and the preparation of terpeneless oils, are illustrated from Messrs. Fritzsche's practice and also from that followed in Grasse and elsewhere. Mr. E. E. Langenau, director of the firm's analytical laboratories, describes in working detail the determination of the analytical characters of essential oils, and the estimation of impurities, adulterants, and constituents of particttlar importance such as cineole and stearoptene. A director of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy (Dr. George Urdang) sketches the history of the industry ; and a professor of bio-organic chemistry (Dr. Haagen-Smit) discusses the pure chemistry of the chain- and ring-systems encountered, and the plant physiology of their formation. The section on the functions of the oils in plants offers, perhaps, too many tentative solutions of this question for any of them to seem very satisfying ; analogously to the famous theologian in meditation on the cosmos, the reader may begin to feel that he has learned every possible thing about essential oils except why God created them. The scope outlined for future volumes of the work, however, suggests that even this uncertainty will, in due time, be resolved.
The Essential Oils
By Dr. Ernest Guenther. Vol. 1: History, Origin in Plants, Production, Analysis. Pp. xvi+427. (New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc.; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1948.) 33s. net.
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The Essential Oils. Nature 163, 663 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163663c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163663c0