Talk:Ben oil

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There's a really good article at She net on ben oil. It's in Swedish, though. Would some kind Swedish speaking soul add some of the information there to this article? Waitak 15:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Translation

Here's the first leg of the translation consisting of the historical facts. Expect more later on.

Peter ^Isotalo 15:38, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

This oil with a long, complicated and intresting history has barely made itself known since its heydays during antiquity. But (recently) something relating to growing conditions or economy has occured that has caught the attention of international cosmetics giants. It's not often that such an ideal perfume oil is discovered - every other millenium or so.

Greece

The old Greeks manufactured herbal oils and ben oil. Theofrastos (4th century BC) had strong opinions about which oils to use to make perfumes; ben oil was the best.

Rome Around 70 AD Pliny describes the tree and its fruits under the name myrobalanum after the Greek word myron "ointment". Around the same time Dioskorides calls the fruits balanos myrepsike" (roughly "acorn shaped fruit well-suited for preperation of fragrant ointments"). This due because grinding the kernels "like bitter almonds, produces a liquid which is used instead of oil to prepare precious ointments." (Take notice that bitter almond oil was used "instead of oil". This implies that the almond oil of antiquity was completely different from the kind used today.) Dioskorides' recommendation helped promote balanos fruits and their oil for medical usage.

Alexandria

By this (?) time Alexandria in Egypt, under Roman rule, grown to the perfume metropolis of its time. This was still true when the Turks took the city in 642 and became familiar with both the fruits and the oil. The Arabic word for myrobola didn't include just the fruit, but also the oil and the herbal oils extracted from it. That Arabic herbal oils usually included myrrh resin, Indian cardemom and other types of cardemom lead to a common misunderstanding: Portuguese botanists who started exploring the Far East in the 16th century wasted years trying to find the tree that produced the fragrant myrobalan oil before they realized that it was just an extract of a plant they already knew of.

Europe

Another misunderstanding arose when a new Malaysian fruit reached Europe through the Arabs. The Europeans confused it with myrobalum and called the new fruits "myrobalans". The problem was only solved by simply renaming the old fruit, borrowing the Arabic bân for the new name. It was enough to separate the two products, but confusion was still common for several hundred years since both were used in medicines. Naturally the ben fruits of antiquity were not the same as the ben fruits of modern times.

Grasse

Recent interest in ben oil began on Jamaica during the first halft of the 19th century. The oil had a reputation for being extremely durable and was often used to lubricate fine mechanics (clocks, for example). In 1848 the oil was analyzed for the first time and a new type of saturated fatty acid was found and was given the name behenic acid.

At the perfume manufactury in Grasse ben oil was used as a maceration oil for herbal oil until it was replaced by cheaper types of oil, alcohol and newly invented solvent agents in the 1870s. In the 1930s it was again put to use again, but was then again forgotten as a component of perfume making, probably mostly due to political turmoil in many European colonies. While ben oil lead a largely obscure existance for the rest of the 20th century as a clockmaker oil large-scale plantations were developed in India.

Pharmacopoeias

Ben oil was registered in the Stockholm pharmacopoeia of 1686 and in other lists of medicinal drugs in general usage, though never in the main Swedish pharmacopoeia.