The streets of Timbuktu in a day of sand wind

For a long time doctors have observed strange epidemics of non contagious diseases, for example rheumatism or ulcer. Cosmo–geological causes have been assumed -  that means solar winds or the fluctuations of terrestrial magnetic field. Two years ago in Timbuktu the major disturb I was asked to cure were haemorrhoids. A real epidemic disease. So when I returned this year I brought with me a big supply of a truly miraculous remedy for this problem – the essential oil of cypress.

Use it in its pure form of essential oil (although a bit hot) or diluted in olive oil (40 drops for 8 ml), it has to be used externally every time one goes to toilet. One should clean oneself with water instead of paper tissues, and then apply the product. Results are rapid and definitive.

But when I arrived in Timbuktu I found an epidemic headache. In majority of cases it was caused by sinusitis. In order to recognize this, it is enough to knock with the tips of a finger on the arch of eyebrows. If patient feels pain, the Para nasal sinuses are inflamed.
The sand winds that sweep the city all year lift the dirty dust of the streets and are the obvious cause of this epidemic disease. Sewers pour out in the streets, and everyone spits on the ground.

The dust of Timbuktu is a real poison and it is not a surprise that women and children, who do not wear the turban with which men wrap their head, are the most affected by all respiratory diseases included sinusitis. However I wonder why two years ago, when hygienic situation in Timbuktu was the same, this epidemic was not an issue. Two things have changed in the city – the gigantic “Orange” telephone antenna and the taste of tap water that smells of a chemical product that is not chlorine. Maybe bleach. Right away I suspected the water because I also had the headache starting from the first days.

 However with aromatherapy the solution to migraine and sinusitis is the same and simple – it is the essential oil of peppermint. It is applied on painful places, eyebrows, temples, cranium or also neck because many headaches can have as origin a problem of neck vertebras and muscles. Peppermint has an immediate effect on the symptoms of sinusitis (headache, nose congestion of and inflamed Para nasal cavities.
With long-term use as a symptomatic cure, this essential oil also works on the cause of the disease until it resolves it definitively. In Timbuktu, however, I obtained straight away long lasting results that I could not have obtained with peppermint alone by using also acupuncture needles on eyebrows.

I went along experimenting the use of aromatherapy and acupuncture together with other problems such as arthritis and back pains with very good results.

Acupuncture needles and essential oils for headache

One of the most frequent problems for which people of Timbuktu came to me was toothache.

In Timbuktu dentist is an unaffordable luxury for almost everyone. This fact accompanied by the loss of Islamic traditions, including cleaning teeth five times a day with a brush stick has caused an enormous problem of oral hygiene with dramatic cases of infections and great affliction amongst children and adults.

 With aromatherapy the solution to the pain is rather simple – one drop of clove on caries has an immediate analgesic effect. Besides, frequent use of this essence can remove tooth infections and stop caries.

 The problem which I stumbled upon was how to put the drop on the tooth when it’s on the upper part of the jaw and how to allow the patient to continue the treatment for next few days alone. Putting the head upside down is not practical and to treat every person in this way would take too much time.

The solution is there – put 50ml of water and 9 drops of essential clove oil in an empty bottle; shake energetically and pour the remedy with which you will rinse your mouth in the bottle cap.

In the case of  Ibrahim, the essence of clove was used in this very way. He could hardly open the mouth and talked with difficulty when he first came, but the grave infection resistant to the antibiotics was resolved thanks to the Anti Shark essence (Lavender, Geranium, Pepermint). It was  used pure on the swollen jaw and neck every day when he visited me, and he applied by himself a dilution with olive oil when he was home.

After a week I had him use the essence in internal use, 3 drops on a sugar 2 times daily. Anti Sharks is the  best essence against all types of inflammations and local infections. It penetrates deeply and brings immediate relief. 

AbdesSalaam Attar
Medico Profumiere

Dopo 10 giorni di aromaterapia, la gioia ritrovata

Sailing towards new horizons

For the English interview just click  HERE

The interview features Natural perfumery aims, ethics and philosophy.

AbdesSalaam Attar interview with Raphaella Barkley

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Below the Japanese version of the interview.

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There is a game going on at www.basenotes.net in which a journalist, Marian Bendeth, interviews a panel of modern perfumers asking them where they would go if they could travel back to the time of their choosing, to meet, chat and co-create with a perfumer of the past.

I am nobody and they would not call me, but I could not stop wondering what I would say myself if the demand was done to me. So I started to imagine where I would really like to go, as a perfumer, and in what epoch. I realized that as a perfumer as well as a person, the place, the date and the person that most of all I would love to meet coincided.
The place is the Arabic Peninsula, the date is 14 hundred years ago and the person is the Prophet of Islam himself.
Before his advent the spirituality of perfume was confined in the temples, kept as a secret by rabbis and priests, in the same way that spirituality itself was the privilege of their casts.
Muhammad (SAS) is the man who said “three things of this material world were rendered dear to my heart, the feminine gender, perfumes and prayer”. He ordered all his follower to use perfume for the Friday prayer, to perfume the dead and to use perfume (natural) as a purification for women following their monthly disturb. His numerous injunctions regarding the use of perfume promoted the culture of the spirituality of perfumes which culminated in the use of scents in the mortar used to build mosques. His well recorded teachings about the medical use of Aromatic materials have been the starting point of Islamic medicine, which is the fount from which our own modern medicine comes, even though as a simple branch and not as a natural outcome of it.

He rendered the use of perfume a religious action for all Muslims, putting directly into their hands what was previously reserved to the religious casts of priests, exactly as he called the people to call directly on their creator without the intermediary of a religious hierarchy. There is not a man in human history that made so much for bringing perfume to all than the prophet of Islam.

The demands on Basenotes are:
• If it was possible to travel back in time to any particular century and decade of your choice to meet your number one inspirational Perfumer:
• Who would you like to meet?
• What specific questions would you want to learn from them?
• If you could bring anything back with you, what would that be?
• If you could team up together in that time period, who would you like to co-create a fragrance for?
• If you could bring anything back with you, what would that be?

The person that I would go to meet, of course is the prophet himself, and for this I would renounce all the perfumes of the world.
I would bring back nothing with me, nothing material at all, the record of him would be enough to fill my life, I would have drunk from his light.
I would maybe dare to ask him to make a bespoke perfume for him, but what I would like to learn from him is not about only about perfumes and their meaning, it is justice, righteousness, truth and reality.

The mysterious and mythic instrument of the perfumer, how to build it, explained step by step and illustrated with pictures.Foldable, easily transportable for working travels, this organ totally innovative is likely to become the model to all perfumers.

http://www.profumo.it/aromaterapia/Corsi/youtube_perfume/perfumer_organ.asp