Aromatherapy is a remedy dating from Antiquity: the Egyptians already included plants such as mint and laurel in their healing potions. It was only later, in the XNUMXth century, that the idea of ​​extracting the active ingredients from plants by distillation appeared.

Aromatherapy is a branch of phytotherapy (phyto = plants and therapy = to heal). It consists of collecting the active ingredients of plants by a complex process of steam distillation to recover the liquid and concentrated form that we know and that we call “essential oil”. Strictly speaking, it is not a question of “fatty substances” but of an infinity of active molecules.

Each essential oil has a particular chemical composition called a “chemotype”. It is defined according to the environment of the plant, the soil, exposure to the sun, temperature, its resistance to bad weather, etc.

The same plant species can therefore produce different essential oils and thus have several “chemotypes”.