Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 300, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1911 — SWEET-SCENTED SUBJECTS [ARTICLE]

SWEET-SCENTED SUBJECTS

Hippocrates and Criton, ancient physicians, prescribed perfumes as medicines. Pliny describes "a compound of dried flowers and spices ing to the pot pourrl.of the modem perfumer. Oddly enough, when cholera prevailed in London and Paris people employed In perfumery factories escaped its ravages. At one time in Syria a tract of land ten square miles in extent was exclusively devoted to the production of Incense trees. Greeks of antiquity anointed J£en*>v ; selves with a perfumed substance thrice a day, so that the delicious odor might never cease. This custom was carried to such an extreme that Solon enacted a law forbidding the Athenians to use scented mixtures. In England a taste for perfumes ap- , pears, to have been prevalent in Shakespeare’s day. During the lifetime of Dean Swift the stores of perfumers were the resorts of loungers. He wrote: "First Issued from per-t turners’ shops a crowd of fashionable f°p*-”