(See, e.g., "Natural and Artificial
Perfumes," _Nature_, December 27, 1900.) The essential principles
of most of our perfumes belong to the complex class of organic
compounds known as terpenes. During recent years a number of the
essential elements of natural perfumes have been studied, in many
cases the methods of preparing them artificially discovered, and
they are largely replacing the use of natural perfumes not only
for soaps, etc., but for scent essences, though it appears to be
very difficult to imitate exactly the delicate fragrance achieved
by Nature. Artificial musk was discovered accidentally by Bauer
when studying the butyltoluenes contained in a resin extractive.
Vanillin, the odoriferous principle of the vanilla bean, is an
aldehyde which was first artificially prepared by Tiemann and
Haarmann in 1874 by oxidizing coniferin, a glucoside contained in
the sap of various coniferae, but it now appears to be usually
manufactured from eugenol, a phenol contained in oil of cloves.
Piperonal, an aldehyde closely allied to vanillin, is used in
perfumery under the name of heliotropin and is prepared from oil
of sassafras and oil of camphor.
Pages:
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199