Essential Oils (Fully Revised and Updated 3rd Edition): A Comprehensive Handbook for Aromatic Therapy

Its a great book and I'm happy I had to buy it because I will defiantly be referring back to it often. The author is clear and easy to understand

Just received the book and wanted to highlight that the publisher released an updated Table of Contents and Index available for download (please refer to photo of inserted Erratum note). Looking forward to diving into the book. Upon initial review it appears to offer what I have been looking for: a brief summary of relevant scientific research studies, and recommended applications and pairings for each essential oil. It offers a perspective on functional applications in a similar way that the Tisserand and Young book provides a perspective on safety precautions by essential oil and constituents. Well done!

Let me start by saying that Jennifer Peace Rhind is one of the most well known and respected people in the world of aromatherapy. Not only she is a distinguished aromatherapist and author of several very well regarded books, but she also a PhD level professional scientist and a biologist. She unleashed her scientific background to a full extent in this book. Knowledge about essential oils is largely based on a combination of empiric knowledge gained by aromatherapists over the years and scientific research data. Empiric knowledge is rarely, if ever, is supported by documented case studies or statistics; the information that travels from book to book may or may not be correct; one can only rely on the reputation of the author of the book (or reputation of the professional who wrote materials for aromatherapy certification courses available for purchase from a number of well known schools). Scientific research data are scarce due to limited funding (no pharmaceutical company would support research of low cost alternative treatments which could undermine their profits, and they lobby as hard as they can against alternative medicine), so, in part due to cost, the majority of studies are in-vitro or animal studies. Consequently, we know a lot how to cure rats with essential oils, but much less how to cure humans, at least at the level of confirmed research.This book is 100% based on research data. The list of references is astounding. The references are not numbered, but they take 119 pages in the book. It is probably over 2000 references. In the course of my own academic career, I wrote several book chapters and review articles with up to 800 reference, and I can tell that analysis and review of such a huge number of publications would take 2-3 years of full time work at least. This is a phenomenal effort.The book consists of largely three parts. The first part, about 220 pages, is general aromatherapy - history, scent, application routes, chemistry, etc. It is a nice summary, but not very extensive and these topics are covered to the same or greater extent in many other books, including books written by Jennifer Peace Rhind herself. The second part, about 90 pages, is unique - it is a scientifically supported review of properties of constituents of essential oils. To my knowledge, to-date, this is the only publicly available book which contains this information. This is a great contribution! It is very valuable for those who use component blending approach in the process of developing their blends - which by the way is a fairly advanced stuff, one has to be quite a bit into chemistry and advanced aromatherapy to do that. The third part is literature summary for a wide range of essential oils, basically, data-driven monographs of essential oils.This is not a book for a general audience. 99% of those who search on Amazon for a book on "essential oils" will not only find this book very expensive, but also will not find in the book the information that they are looking for. It has no recipes, no suggested blends for specific ailments. Essential oils profiles are arranged not alphabetically as most books do but by plant families. If you look for Vetiver, you need to know that it belongs to family Poaceae and genus Chrysopogon (or use the index). Information about therapeutic properties of the oils is limited to (sometimes scarce) scientific literature data. Generic, empirical information is usually limited to 1-2 paragraphs. If you have a problem and look for a ready-to-use solution, a blend ready to use, you will have very hard times finding an answer in this book.In contrast, professional aromatherapist or aromatherapy students who use PubMed to find information, who, for example, follow classes by Robert Tisserand who is also extremely data driven, who are pursuing a certification in aromatherapy, would find a treasure trove of information in this book. Having this book on a shelf helps to separate anecdotal information from data based on research. It is a little frustrating that research is so limited, especially research on humans, but it is what it is. Modern aromatherapy is largely a grey area.Unfortunately, as sad as it is, Jennifer Peace Rhind apparently ran out of steam when she completed gathering the research data and just gave up on making the book user-friendly. Finding anything in this book is a challenge. To begin with, the table of contents is just 11 items for a 912 page book. One entry for a 300 page section is nothing, it makes table of contents useless. Index is of a similar quality. Two things are indexed: names of the authors which were referenced in the book, and names of essential oils. Nothing else. Therefore, if you are looking for a specific group of properties (e.g., anti-viral) or specific health conditions for which specific oils were found useful in the literature (e.g., epilepsy or flu), or a cross-reference which oils are anti-fungal, you are out of luck. If you look for a specific constituent (e.g., chamazulene), you are also out of luck - the only way of finding it is flipping through the pages in an appropriate section.This book is meant to be a great reference book for professionals. It has enormous amount of data. But the data has its value only when one can find what one needs. In a book, it means a good index and good table of contents. I do not know if Jennifer Peace Rhind ran out of steam, or her editors discouraged her, but 1% of work which was left out kills 95% of value of this book.Also, from a practical standpoint and as an example, this weekend I was doing research for a specific blend for a not very common condition (I am finishing my level 2 certification program). I used several sources for my research, from PubMed to my collection of aromatherapy books. I had very high hopes for this book which I got just this week, and I found it not being particularly helpful. I found more useful information in other books, maybe because there is not much, if anything, in the scientific literature on this topic, but also possibly because it is so hard to find anything in this book.With all due respect, and with all desire to give this book a stellar rating (I waited for this edition since it was announced), three starts seems to be a fair rating. Great material, lots of data, but SO HARD TO USE!!! Five stars for the work that was done to collect information, one star for making it easy to use and useful. I would like to suggest Jennifer Peace Rhind to imagine how she would write this book without databases which she can type key words in to find the information she needs. I am sure she used all these modern resources and ways of searching and indexing, why on Earth did she leave these means completely out in her book?

Llegó la portada rota. Pero el resto del libro en buen estado

I was really looking forward to this book and it has great information. However, it's really bulky. Over 900 pages of information packed in on pages less than 10" tall and 6" wide. Makes it very hard for me to use, makes me wish it was printed on larger pages.

At the first look it was hard to find anything in this book. Tons of details and data are collected and put together. So i was thinking to send it back. But as the days were gone and the book was more familiar and easier to use, i decided to keep it and enjoy. If someone likes the essential oils, aromatherapy, this book is a good base. You can read a lot.Lots of work, data collection and putting together.