Arab perfumers in the sixth century were the first to discover that diluting the obnoxious smelling dried contents of the little pod found near the anus of the male Asian musk deer not only resulted in a pleasant odour, but when added to perfumes allowed the scent to linger longer. Musk was even incorporated into the mortar of important buildings so that it would waft a pleasant smell into the air. There was even a belief that the aroma had aphrodisiac qualities and would therefore enhance the pleasure of activities that might be engaged in.
Europeans learned about perfumery from the Arabs and recognized the value of adding musk to their products. The problem was scarcity of supply. Some musk-like fragrances were found in the glandular secretions of other animals such as the musk ox, the African civet cat, and the muskrat but they were not equals of the real thing. Then along came Alfred Baur and his tinkering with trinitrotoluene, a chemical that had been first prepared by the German chemist Julius Wilbrand in 1863 as a yellow dye. When its explosive potential became evident, there were all sorts of attempts to improve its power by altering the structure of the molecule. The nitro groups supplied the oxygen needed to combust the rest of the molecule that was composed of carbon and hydrogen.聽
Baur thought that by adding four carbon atoms to the molecule, a 鈥渂utyl鈥� group in chemical parlance, he would increase its internal fuel supply. It didn鈥檛 work. The idea turned out to be literally a stinker. Baur recognized the similarity of the smell to that of musk and showed that it could be readily produced on a large scale cheaply. There was a concern though. When exposed to light, the nitromusks caused skin rashes. Hope for better synthetic musks was rekindled in the 1920s when the Croatian-born Swiss chemist Leopold Ruzicka was able to identify the major component in the musk deer鈥檚 secretion as a molecule with a basic structure of fifteen carbon atoms joined in a ring. The discovery of 鈥渕uscone鈥� helped earn him a Nobel Prize in chemistry, but the ring structure proved to be too difficult to synthesize in the laboratory.
However, a breakthrough came in 1935, from an unlikely source. Wallace Carothers at the DuPont chemical company had just invented nylon and in the process had become an expert in joining small molecules together to form a chain, or a 鈥減olymer.鈥� Looking at the structure of muscone, he wondered whether he could use a similar reaction to join the ends of a chain of carbon atoms into a ring. Before long, 鈥淎strotone鈥� was born, the first 鈥渕acrocyclic鈥� (big ring) musk. Its structure was not exactly the same as muscone, but it was close enough to be a commercial success. It is still produced today under the name of Musk T.
The search for improved synthetic musks did not end with Astrotone. By the end of the Second World War, synthetic chemistry had advanced by leaps and bounds and chemists focused again on the nitromusks to see if they could be altered to reduce their photosensitizing property. It turned out that the nitro groups on the molecule were the culprits. Eliminating these, and some clever tinkering with the basic structure, resulted in a new class of synthetic musks called the 鈥減olycyclics鈥�. These can be produced economically and can be incorporated into a wide array of products. Today, a wide array of synthetic musks are available for perfumers to work with. That, I imagine is of great relief to the male musk deer.
