Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Essential Oils: A Complete Guide to the Use of Aromatics in Aromatherapy, Herbalism, Health and Well-Being (Health Workbooks)

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I have the repint of this book ( published in Great Britain in 1992) and as a certified Aromatherapist and Reflexologist have found this book very helpfull. I have not seen the new one so I can't say about it. The older one (1992)was for someone that has experience with the oils and wanted a quick guide for Family, Actions, anf Principal Constituents of the oils. This is a book for someone that is wanting to go beond the every day use of Aromatherapy

My wife is big into the aromatherapy essential oils stones things like that. She's taken courses on it, she talks about it with their friends, and she reads about them on the Internet. I wanted to be nice to her so I got her this book as a surprise. She loves it.

The book covers a lot of stuff. It's got some history of different routes and things so information about aromatherapy and a herbalism. The stuff she found more interesting though is it also tells about the body and actions and applications for the oil basically how whales work what they do to different parts of the body and how they can affect things. Later in the book it shows how to use them at home for things such as massage, skin oils and lotions, hair care, etc. I personally enjoy the massage aspect. The book also teaches about creative blending of the oils which she really enjoyed. She's been mixing different ones according to the book and having a great time doing.

At 194 pages, this book is a great buy for somebody who likes essential oils aromatherapy and such. I don't want to mislead you though, this isn't like a paperback book on aromatherapy. The portions I mentioned before that she liked reading are only about 38 pages. The rest of the book just tells about the different types of oil. Essentially, you'll see a family, synonyms, general description, distribution, herbal/folk tradition, actions, extraction (how the oil is obtained), characteristics, principal constitutes (chemical makeup), safety data, home applications, and other uses for each oil. The book is really more of a reference material than a book for beginners. There are a few pictures, but they're just drawings and the not all that interesting; I don't want to give the impression that they don't break up the text a little bit and some of them are actually useful diagrams or representations of the source plant, but were not talking about full-color pictures of everything. I kind of wish there were more diagrams a more different plants, but maybe that would've made the book too long. Anyway, good book and I suggested if you're already into oils otherwise start off with a different book and come back to this one.

The research ability of this book is not set up as well as some. The information also is not as advanced or as extensive as some other authors. My preference would be Worwood over Lawless.