"Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away." (Keller qtd in Feller xxii)
             Our sense of smell has been linked to our sense of taste, our memories, our bodies, and now our emotions. Whose mouth doesn't water at the smell of bread baking in the oven? Who isn't transported back in time to our mother or grandmother's kitchen, by the smell of freshly-baked cookies? Just the thought of the distinctive rotten-egg odor of sulfur is enough to turn most people's stomachs. We use perfumes, after-shave, scented soaps, and air-fresheners to smell 'better'. Aromatherapy expands on this practice. It is the use of aromas from essential oils created by plants to heal and enhance a person's mental and physical well being.
             The long and varied history of Aromatherapy can be traced back to the time of the Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt. Hasnain Walji was no doubt referring to the hieroglyphics found in the temple of Edfu and the Ebers Papyrus---a seventy odd foot medical scroll from 1500 BC---when he contends "that their practise of medicine, rituals, embalming, and astrology incorporated the use of fragrant spices and oils, resins and bark, and that their vinegars, wines and beers were scented." (9) In the temples and on the streets, incense was burned as an offering to the various Egyptian gods. Scented cones made out of animal fat or charcoal were worn inside the hairpieces and headdresses of commoners and royalty, alike.
             The Egyptians' love of scent extended even into their deaths. Egyp...