PINE TREE PERFUME CURE.
SWEET SCENTS A RESTORER OF TIRED NERVES.
The Odor of the Pines the Perfume That Women Rely on Most Just Now to Drive Away the Blues
Perfumed Sea Salt for Bath
Scented Moth Barriers.
Pine needle and sweet perfumes are used to soothe the nerves of the New York woman. It has been discovered that you need not be out of sorts unless you want to be, and in addition 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 must 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 come to life with the budding of the flowers and die down when the flowers fade.
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 woman 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 In deed and needs a quick freshing 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 15 minutes she feels all right again.
There is an extra nervous woman in town who has a comfortable stuffed with pine needles. She gathered the needles this 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.
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 to find 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, 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.
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 salt sea, with a slight tinge of violet, which is always found in salt air.
If you want to take a bath in some thing 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 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 a 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.
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 your hands from morning until night.
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 the 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 unfortunately it is expensive. Oil of rose geranium is very effective and there are other extracts which can be bought and used to good advantage.
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. New York Sun.
Pointe Coupee Banner [New Roads, LA] 24 March 1906: p. 7
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: The modern “aroma-therapy” industry is nothing new. So many of the suggestions in this article are still current: persons selling homes are urged to bake an apple pie or boil apple peels and cinnamon to create a “welcome-home” atmosphere. Scented bath-salts and candles are a popular hostess gift. And in this scientific age, when we are supposed to have moved beyond the whimsical theory that germs are animals that will flee at the scent of roses, we find aggressively scented “anti-bacterial” sprays. One can also buy “pine scent” to give the artificial Christmas tree a whiff of holidays past without the necessity of cleaning up pine needles for months afterwards.
One physician claimed that pine-needles were a handy specific for influenza, although Mrs Daffodil is pursing her lips dubiously at the method of delivery:
Pine-Needle Cigar and Cigarettes in Influenza.—As an item of interest, the quickest relief from Influenza which my patients obtain, is through the use of pine-needle cigars and cigarettes. I find that they will act as a preventative, and once the disease has instituted proceedings they act like magic. Any one can make the cigarettes. I have no hesitancy in recommending their use, as nothing is used in their manufacture but the fresh pine needle and the best of tobacco a non-smoker can inhale with no unpleasant effects.—Harry Neafle, M. D., in the Medical News.
The Medical Age Vol. 8, 1890: p. 20
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Mrs Daffodil Digresses 