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Natural and Artificial Perfumes

Abstract

THE passing century has seen the rise and subsequent decay of several great branches of chemical industry. Early in the century, when the chemical methods applicable to the manufacture of alkalis and of alkali products were being actively developed, profits were large, whilst now that the chemical difficulties encountered in the manufacture of alkali have been practically overcome, the financial prosperity of an alkali works depends mainly upon economy in carrying out certain engineering processes; the science of the chemist is now of rather less importance than the art of the engineer. The younger industry of coal-tar dye-stuff manufacture is similarly, though more gradually, developing into a branch of engineering, and in consequence money is not made so rapidly as was once the case. During the last twenty-five years a new chemical industry, that concerned with artificial perfumes, has made rapid progress and would seem to give more promise of both chemical and financial prosperity than either of its elder sisters. Perfumes are only needed in small quantities, but, in accordance with the law that anything ministering to our pleasures fetches a far higher price than a mere article of utility, profits upon a really gigantic scale may be easily obtained; again, the enduring chemical prosperity of the new industry is assured in that a constant succession of new perfumes is absolutely necessary; by the time that improved methods of manufacture and competing processes have lowered the price of a perfume, the material has become unfashionable. No lady would use a cheap perfume. Further, the sense of smell in man is as yet wholly uncultured; in walking through the country we can rarely identify a particular odour caught until the sight of the plant from which it emanates makes us wonder at our hesitation. The coal-tar colour industry found us provided with a highly-developed system of colour perception, whilst the newly-inaugurated artificial perfume industry has to cultivate a neglected sense probably possessing similar artistic potentialities.

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P., W. Natural and Artificial Perfumes . Nature 63, 212–214 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/063212a0

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