If perfume continues to fascinate us despite a certain banalization, due to the overabundance of launches (more than 2000 per year), it is because it played for a long time a crucial role in the life of humans: it was the main drug. From Antiquity until the separation of perfumery and pharmacy in France in 1810, the prophylactic and therapeutic role of perfume will be constant. From Hippocrates who, in the fifth century BC, asked the Athenians to burn perfumes on aromatic wood fires to chase away the epidemic that was falling on their city, to Doctor Raspail who, in 1843, still advocated camphor in the treatment of many evils, by way of Abbess Hildegarde de Bingen, a famous herbalist of the 12th century, examples abound. Perfume waters, vinegars and aromatic powders, cassolettes, balms, odoriferous sachets, amber apples, gloves, hats and scented fans constitute a whole arsenal of aromatics whose power is summed up in this sentence of a doctor of Louis XIV: “All the virtue of the drug lies only in its smell.” Today, in line with the growing demand for natural products and environmental protection, there is a return of care by aromatic plants. Perfumers and aromatherapists develop organic wellness fragrances. Fragrant, energizing, relaxing and energizing waters are legion, as a link with the fragrances that heal the soul and body and an extension of the soon-to-be-millennial history of the Hospitallers of Saint-Antoine.
On the occasion of the inaugural weekend of this new permanent, interactive and olfactory route, the Museum of Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye invites you to go back in time to discover the central role that perfumes have played in the pharmacopoeia from antiquity to the present day.