Pine tree scent was an extremely popular scent back in the early 1900s, and people were beginning to use it as a cure for insomnia, headaches, and nervousness.
The article below was originally published in 1906 and it contains a lot of information about the aromatherapy beliefs at that time. However, this article is being published for research purposes only and StrangeAgo does not endorse the “cures” described below.
Pine Tree and Perfume Cure
Pine needles and sweet perfumes are used to soothe the nerves of the New York Women. It has been discovered that you need not be out of sorts unless you want to be, and in addition to that you can cure your troublesome nerves with nice sweet odors instead of resorting to unpleasant drugs.
The first and most particular rule is that the sweet odors be natural ones. There must be no made up perfumes. The scents must be those that grow in the parks and spring up in the woods, that comes to life with the budding of the flowers and die down when the flowers face.
Those who are trying the perfume cure are giving their attention just now to pine scents mostly. If you want to get the genuine pine odor, take a pine pillow, no matter how old, and lay it near the fire.
In a little while it will begin to warm up and to give out sweet scents. You will be treated to the original odor of the pine.
There is a very nervous and very sensitive women in New York who treats herself every day to the pine needle cure. When she was away last summer she gathered material for many pillows of pine needles.
When she is tired she takes a pillow and warms it and presently it begins to give out a sweet smell of pines. Then she puts the pillow behind her head and in a little while she feels refreshed.
On days when she is very tired indeed and needs a quick refreshing she takes a dozen pillows and heats them very quickly. With these she furnishes her couch. She heaps it high with pillows and then she lies down and breathes the sweet scent. In fifteen minutes she feels all right again.
Pine Mattress
There is an extra nervous woman in town who has a comfortable stuffed with pine needles. She gathered the needles last fall, and then she put them in the comfortable and quilted it just as though she were quilting feathers.
Pretty soon she had a thick sweet beautiful covering. It was heavy, but so delicious that she did not mind the weight.
Some nights when she is very weary she sleeps with this heavy pine comfortable over her. Again, she heats it and puts it underneath her. It is refreshing, no matter how she uses it.
Sweet Scents
If you like sweet scents and want to try the perfume cure you can get them by utilizing odds and ends about the house. You will be surprised how many you can turn into perfume.
Take apple peelings and dry them and some day when the house seems muggy take a handful and throw them on the stove. Take off the peelings before they begin to burn, but leave them on just long enough to get the delicious fumes they will give out, the fumes that are so delightful when they come out of the oven as baked apples are cooking.
Some women keep a chafing dish always handy for the making of sweet scents. Into the chafing dish they can put a little cologne, which when heated will send its fragrance through the room, or they can add a pinch of cinnamon or half a drop of oil of cloves, or even a tiny bit of apple peeling. It takes very little to make a pleasant smell in the room.
The influence of odors upon the spirits can hardly be overestimated. If you will go in a pine forest you are greeted with a smell which is invigorating, almost intoxicating, in its curious buoyancy.
If you go into a clover field you get an odor which is just as pleasant but altogether different, and this odor can be brought into the house in winter by taking clover heads, drying them and stuffing pillows with them. On some muggy, gloomy day the pillow can be warmed up and you have a perfume which is delightful.
Sea Salt
If you want something particularly pleasant, take some sea salt and put it in a wide mouthed bottle and pour in a few drops of violet perfume. Close the bottle tight, let it stand a while, then open, and you get the curious smell of the salt sea, with a slight tinge of violet, which is always found in salt air.
If you want to take a bath in something that is very sweet smelling prepare some sea salt after this fashion. Buy the salt at the drug store; take a big handful of it, lay it in a bottle and add some violet perfume. Let it stand three days and it is ready for the bath.
Another plan is to add to the sea salt a grain of musk, a little essence of violet and finally about a teaspoonful of alcohol. Set the bottle away for three days, turning it twice a day.
When you are ready to take your bath, throw a handful of the sea salt into the water. It will perfume the water without making it too salty.
Take a jug of salt, and into a gallon jug pour half an ounce of rose geranium oil and a cup of alcohol. Turn your jug upside down. Let it stand a day, turn it back for a day or so, and so on until you have worked with it three weeks. The result will be a very nice jug of sweet smells.
There come squares of preparation of ammonia which can be made into very nice bath vinegar. Take a dozen or more of these solid pieces and add just enough violet perfume to cover them.
Then add spirits of cologne until you have a pint bottle nicely filled. This makes a delicious bath vinegar, which can be used every day for two weeks, for it takes very little to perfume the water.
Hand Wash
If you like your hands to smell sweet, and to some people there is something positively intoxicating about a pair of sweet hands, you can make a hand wash by taking a quart of spirits of cologne, put it in a half gallon jug, add an ounce of oil of rose geranium and two grains of musk.
Let it stand a week; then fill up with spirits of cologne. At the end of another week you will have as fine a gallon of perfume as you will want.
When you are ready to wash your hands with this sweet mixture take a bowl of warm water and add to it a pinch of powdered borax. Into this put half a wine glass of perfume.
Use no soap, but keep this water for rinsing. It will impart a lasting fragrance which will remain upon you hands from morning until night.
Sachets
Have you ever tried putting up your winter furs in perfumery?
Make some sachets and scatter them through the storage chest, thus using sachet powders instead of camphor.
You will find that the moths stay away just as well and the furs come out in the fall smelling sweet.
And the same thing with clothes – those which you are putting away until spring. Many of them are of cashmere and light wool and you don’t want the moths to get into them. Put them away between layers of sachets and you will find that you will have never a moth.
There is a story told of a woman who spent the summer upon the Jersey coast where mosquitoes are thick. Not wanting to be eaten alive she sprinkled her bedroom with sachet powder until the whole room was filled with perfume. All night long she slept in peace.
Animals do not as a rule like strong odors, and disease germs are particularly averse to them. A strong odor of rose will drive away many of the contagious diseases, so some scientists affirm, and you can actually keep yourself well by having nice smells around you.
Attar of rose is very effective, but it is expensive. Oil of rose geranium is very effective and there are other extracts which can be bought and used to good advantage.
Perfume
In old fashioned German households the custom prevails of buying a certain amount of good perfume every year. This perfume is bought not to be bottled and preserved, but to be used, and when it disappears more is purchased.
The fad for a distinctive odor is dying away, and women are inclined to scent themselves like an English garden. An English garden is one in which all the common flowers grow, and when you take a sniff of it you do not know whether you are smelling violets or mignonette, geraniums or roses, delicate pansies or strong heliotrope. Thus it is fashionable to mingle your perfumes.
The pine tree scent is the odor of the moment and wise women are making little bags of pine and heaping them up, so that they and their apartments may smell like a pine tree.
Source: The Prince George’s enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.), 02 March 1906.
