Good Idea, Chap: Remember Rosemary?

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As I was going to bed last night, I remember coming up with this amazing topic for today’s entry.

It was so amazing, in fact, that I fell asleep with this huge grin on my face, adamant that tomorrow would be a brilliant day.

As you have probably guessed by now, when I woke up today, I didn’t have the foggiest about what I had thought of last night.

I was pretty certain, though, that it had something to do with a good idea that someone had come up with at some point of his or her life (which was incredibly helpful, NOT).

As the day went by, I became more and more frustrated about the fact that I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to write about.

In the end, during my lunch break, I went on The Independent’s website to calm myself down and to desperately look for a topic to write on (you say sad, I say resourceful).

An article immediately caught my eye; it was both informative and ludicrous enough to fit in today’s column just fine.

‘Smell of rosemary may improve your memory’, it read.

<< http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/smell-of-rosemary-may-improve-memory-8565038.html>>

At first, I was quite amused and thought that the above was a late April fools joke. When I did some research on it, however, it turned out that ALL of the major newspapers had included it on their websites.

There were, of course, two possibilities. Namely, that:

1.       There was an international conspiracy afoot in that the media sector had secretly contracted with rosemary suppliers to make the public believe the above and buy more rosemary at higher prices
2.        It was true.

You can imagine my surprise when, in one of the articles, I read that Shakespeare had once said that rosemary oil was good for your memory.

Well, it might seem that, for the millionth time, he had been right.

Many have gone back to the source with acerbic remarks, accusing researchers of ‘selective research’, claiming that the 66 people used in the research were not examined under ‘real- life’ conditions.

That is to say, they weren't exposed to the everyday stress caused by the constant need to multi- tasking, meet deadlines and eat junk food.

Critics of the study argue that if the 66 people had been placed under ‘normal’ conditions (say, in McDonald’s), they would have simply not had the time to even notice the rosemary smell around them.

Although the above has some degree of truth value attached to it, it must be noted that none of the 66 people involved in the study was told whether he was put in a rosemary- scented room or a normal room.

Further, all of those people were given a myriad of tasks to undertake and things to remember which meant that they, too, might have not had the chance to ‘notice’ the rosemary smell.

Thus, it might have worked on a subconscious (and even chemical) level.

Regardless of the torrents of speculations that the above study has given birth to, the discovery might be a step forward to improving our capability to remember more and for longer periods of time.

But I guess you want to forget about it now, eh?