Five fragrances

No further details are available on the purification practices, except that they involve burning incense (the five fragrances, wuxiang) and making ablutions (niuyu)d ... 

First undertake the purification practices for seven days, and increase your purity with ablutions and the five fragrances (wuxiang). Do not pass by filth and dirt, or by houses where mourning is being observed, or by houses inhabited by women of the age of marriage. 

On the five fragrances see above, p. 88 and Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures, 358. 

Odor perception and description are highly subjective in nature. Nevertheless, there is a generally agreed-upon odor vocabulary that is used to characterize individual ingredients and finished fragrances. Table 1 shows some commonly used odor descriptors grouped into five general classifications. 

In the soap, perfume, and flavor industries benzyl alcohol is primarily used in the form of its aUphatic esters. Benzyl benzoate [120-51-4] finds widespread use as a fragrance diluent. Benzyl alcohol is frequently employed in bar soap fragrances at 30—40 wt % of the fragrance. Benzyl alcohol is commercially available in five grades (Table 2). 

Plants produce a vast array of terpenes, alkenes built in multiples of five carbon atoms. Many terpenes have characteristic fragrances. For example, the fresh odor of a pine forest is due to pinene, a ten-carbon molecule with a ring structure and one double bond. The fragrances of terpenes make them important in the flavor and fragrance industry. Limonene, another ten-carbon molecule with a ring and two double bonds, is the principal component of lemon oil. Geraniol, a chainlike molecule with two double bonds, is one of the molecules that is responsible for the fragrance of roses and is used in many perfumes. Many other terpenes have important medicinal properties. 

As I became more and more sensitive over the last five or six years, I was seeing a therapist. That helped, just to talk about it with the therapist and my husband and my family. There s only one person out of my group of friends who I really feel understands. It s still hard for people who don t have this to understand. It s only when times are really bad, which is infrequent, that it s an issue. Most of my friends don t wear perfume, and no one at work wears perfume anymore. Every year I put out a memo at the beginning of the year saying Thank you so much for your kindness and thoughtfulness and your awareness of my sensitivities to fragrances. People really appreciate it. They want to do whatever will work. And I operate normally. 

Mix the Liquid Citric Acid-50% with an equal volume of water. Slowly add the ammonium hydroxide solution. The neutralization should be done cautiously and under agitation, as the reaction is exothermic. Add Cellosolve, surfactant, remaining water, fragrance and dye. The formula is suitable for a pump spray. Bathtub, sinks, faucets and other hard surfaces should be sprayed from a distance of about 10 inches. For maximum effectiveness, the deposited cleaner fluid should be left at work for at least five minutes and then rinsed off with water or removed with a wet cloth or sponge. 

Terpenes are natural products usually obtained from the essential oils of plants. They contain multiples of five-carbon atoms (5, 10, 15, and so on). Each five-carbon arrangement is called an isoprene unit, a four-carbon chain with a one-carbon branch at C-2. Terpenes are frequently used in fragrances and perfumes. Steroids are lipids that contain a unique four-ring structure and are biosynthetically related to terpenes. Important examples of steroids include cholesterol, the bile acids, and the sex hormones. 

Our next example emphasises one aspect of guideline 1. Some functional groups are so deactivating that it is difficult to do any further chemistry once they have been inserted. In other contexts it may be that they are so unstable that we would not wish to risk any further reactions. Musk ambrette 6 is a synthetic musk, essential in perfumes to enhance and retain the fragrance. It has five substituents round a benzene ring. Two of these, the nitro groups, are so deactivating that we want to add them last. So we disconnect them first. 

Worldwide, in excess of five million pounds of linalool and its esters are manufactured for fragrances by five different processes. Three of them involve methylheptenone as an intermediate. The other two are based on turpentine. The three routes to methyl-heptenone are outlined in Figure 13. 

It is hoped that a similar review in five years would include Sandalore or another major new, synthetic fragrance alcohol. 

If we look further into the chemical makeup of fragrances produced by flowers, taking rose as a typical example, we find that the oil is usually made up of perhaps no more than four of five materials that represent the main bulk of the product, with frequently hundreds of other materials making up the balance. If we mix together in the... 

Of 443 individuals who were tested for contact sensitization, five had a positive reaction to A. montana and nine to C. officinalis, a mixture of the two was positive in 18 cases (3). Sensitization was often accompanied by reactions to nickel, Myroxylon pereirae resin, fragrance mix, propolis, and colophon. 

As a superfruit, strawberries score well on all five criteria—but no one would need scientific evidence to think of this fruit as super. Everyone seems to love strawberries just for the eating experience and the many pleasures of their color, fragrance, and taste. 

In conclusion, this product is probably the most aggressive and potentially complex product of the five to perfume. It is highly likely that the fine fragrance formulation will need to be significantly modified to be stable in this medium, whilst still giving the overall impression (in use) that it has essentially the same smell. 

Table A2 illustrates essentially what the perfume-ethanol-water mix is in a fragrance bottle, denoted by its description. Figure A1 traces the historical growth of alchemical tradition from the five main centres of civilization through 5000 years of history to the present.

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