Uses—Cabbage roses are now scarcely employed in pharmacy for any other purpose than making rose water. A syrup used to be prepared from them, which was esteemed a mild laxative.
OLEUM ROSÆ.
Attar or Otto[997] of Rose, Rose Oil; F. Essence de Roses; G. Rosenöl.
Botanical Origin—Rosa damascena Miller, var.—This is the rose cultivated in Turkey for the production of attar of rose; it is a tall shrub with semi-double, light-red (rarely white) flowers, of moderate size, produced several on a branch, though not in clusters. Living specimens sent by Baur[998] which flowered at Tübingen, were examined by H. von Mohl and named as above.[999]
R. damascena is unknown in a wild state. Koch[1000] asserts that it was brought in remote times to Southern Italy, whence it spread northward. In the opinion of Baker[1001] Rosa damascena is to be referred to Rosa gallica ([see p. 259 above]); it must be granted that the Rose mentioned in footnote 2, as grown with one of us, approaches very much to Rosa gallica.
History—Much as roses were prized by the ancients, no preparation such as rose water or attar of rose was obtained from them. The liquid that bore the name of Rose Oil (ῤόδινον ἔλαιον) is stated by Dioscorides[1002] to be a fatty oil in which roses have been steeped. In Europe a similar preparation was in use down to the last century, Oleum rosarum, rosatum or rosaceum, signifying an infusion of roses in olive oil in the London Pharmacopœia of 1721.
The first allusion to the distillation of roses we have met with, is in the writings of Joannes Actuarius,[1003] who was physician to the Greek emperors at Constantinople towards the close of the 13th century. Rose water was distilled at an early date in Persia; and Nisibin, a town north-west of Mosul, was famous for it in the 14th century.[1004]
Kämpfer speaks[1005] with admiration of the roses he saw at Shiraz (1683-4), and says that the water distilled from them is exported to other parts of Persia, as well as to all India; and he adds as a singular fact, that there separates from it a certain fat-like butter, called Ættr gyl, of the most exquisite odour, and more valuable even than gold. The commerce to India, though much declining, still exists; and in the year 1872-73, 20,100 gallons of rose water, valued at 35,178 rupees (£3,517), were imported into Bombay from the Persian Gulf.[1006] Rose oil itself is no longer exported from Persia, as it still used to be from Shiraz in the time of Niebuhr (1778).
Rose water was much used in Europe during the middle ages, both in cookery and at the table. In some parts of France, vassals were compelled to furnish to their lords so many bushels of roses, which were consumed in the distillation of rose water.[1007]
The fact that a butyraceous oil of delicious fragrance is separable from rose water, was noticed by Geronimo Rossi[1008] of Ravenna in 1582 (or in 1574?) and by Giovanni Battista Porta[1009] of Naples in 1589; the latter in his work on distillation says—“Omnium difficillime extractionis est rosarum oleum atque in minima quantitate sed suavissimi odoris.”[1010] The oil was also known to the apothecaries of Germany in the beginning of the 17th century, and is quoted in official drug-tariffs of that time.[1011] Angelus Sala, about 1620, in describing the distillation of the oil speaks of it as being of “ ... candicante pinguedine instar Spermatis Ceti.” In Pomet’s time (1694) it was sold in Paris, though, on account of its high price, only in very small quantity. The mention of it by Homberg[1012] in 1700, and in a memoir by Aublet[1013] (1775) respecting the distillation of roses in the Isle of France, shows that the French perfumers of the last century were not unacquainted with true rose oil, but that it was a rare and very costly article.