Castoreum

The castoreum is a very odorous fatty secretion produced by sexual glands of the beaver located below the tail, near the anus. It has two functions: it makes it possible the beaver to delimit its territory and to waterproof its peeling.

Use

This substance is known as of the Antiquité and one found to him various uses in medicine and perfumery. The use of castoreum was, with the trade of its fur and its meat, one of the reasons of the progressive disappearance of the beaver in Europe.

Medicine

Although it is not used almost any more in modern medicine, castoreum was usually used Antiquity in XVIIIme century. It belonged to the treatment of many diseases of which in particular:

the epilepsy
diseases of the Uterus
the Fever
headaches

It was also used as a Aphrodisiaque.

The virtues of castoreum to fight the headaches are quite real, since it contains Salicylic acid (component close to the Aspirine). Today still, some recommend the use of castoreum as stimulant, anti-hysterical and antispasmodic.

Perfumery

Castoreum is one of the four animal raw materials of the Parfumerie with the Musc, the Ambergris and the Civette. Its odor holds of the Cuir, animal oil, the Fourrure. The substance a little fatty, very rich, is coloured sometimes a little by the power supply of the beaver. It is used in the perfumes of the amber type (or Eastern), like in certain male perfumes.

Castoreum is less and less used in parfurmery because its extraction requires to kill the animal. However, progress of the organic chemistry makes it possible today to produce a synthetic equivalent which, even if it inevitably does not have all the smoothness of castoreum, avoids an useless massacre.

References

castoreum with the International Museum of Perfumery

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