Essential oils are used in cosmetics, perfumes, soaps, and other products. It is also used for adding scents to incense and household cleaning products and for flavoring drink and food. The natural extract of these essential oils of plants have the aromatic compounds that have many healing properties which get infused into the mind and body. Aromatic oils are used in perfumery, cosmetics, flavoring of food along with its curative properties. Oils are diluted or volatilized in carrier oil which is the base oil and used in massage or aromatherapy.
These oils are generally extracted by distillation, often by using steam. Although steaming is the most popular method of extracting essential oil there several other methods like cold pressing, solvent extraction, fractional distillation and percolation, carbon dioxide extraction and many other methods are adopted to extract, remove and concentrate the aromatic constituents from the plant.
A wide range of aromatic oils is commonly available in the market. Extract of clove, sandalwood, olive, eucalyptus, basil, carrot, cardamom, black pepper, orange, neem, camphor, bay, fenugreek, grapefruit and numerous other naturally extract oil, or the essential oil is available in the market. The medicinal properties of nature need no mention which is used as an age-old traditional practice. Most of our generation has also experienced the richness of essential oils from grandparents who recommends in some minor illness like a cough, cold, pain, skin irritation, etc. But this essential oil as mentioned above has the richness to treat serious and major illness as well. The blends and the type of essential oil a needs the recommendation from expert and reference to old books before treating disease.
Interest in essential oil has considerably increased in recent decades because of the popularity of aromatherapy, a branch of alternative medicine. This branch of medicine claims that the earliest recorded techniques and methods of produce essential oils production are believed to be that of Ibn al-Baitar, an Andalusian physician, chemist and pharmacist from 1188–1248AD
