Sure eugenol seems like an obscure thing to write about. Yet, it is a topic that has fascinated me for some time. I first got a whiff of eugenol when I was searching for a solution to a skin problem I once had, eczema. Well, I tried several lotions, but nothing seemed to control it. I was especially disappointed by hydrocortozone which I found largely ineffective. Then I ran across Zim’s Crack Creme (the original formulation), actually quite by accident. My wife bought it for me thinking it was something else. In spite of the hokey name the stuff solved my problem in a matter of weeks. Now I just use it after every shower wherever I feel a bit itchy. This sounds like a selfish plug, and in a way it is. I am not making any money on this endorsement. I just want as many people as possible to use it so that Zim keeps making the stuff, because I would hate to have to start over looking for a solution for my skin problem.

Well, there is a very distinct smell of cloves in Zim’s Crack Creme. It seemed pretty obvious to me that one of the ingredients of this stuff is clove oil, even though it is not listed on the package. Although it does mention Mercia Oil. In any case, A couple of months ago I put a series of sites on InDepthInfo about different spices. One of those spices happened to be about cloves. It was here that I discovered that the essential oil in cloves is called eugenol and, indeed, this oil is sometimes used in lotions. Then I found out that this oil is an anti-oxidant and in other spices. All this led me to dig deeper, until I ended up producing an article for InDepthInfo on the many facets of Eugenol.

I have trouble writing about topics that do not interest me, so I hammer away at topics that do. Sometimes they tend to be obscure. But on the whole I hope they add to my knowledge of the universe, if no one elses. I tend to think of InDepthInfo as a kind of repository of stuff that I find interesting. This, I hope, keeps the writing fresh, and gives me the drive to research the topics to a depth that justifies the name I picked for the website way back in the last century.