Bergamot is a citrus, cold-pressed from the peel of a fruit grown mainly in Calabria, and it is what gives Earl Grey tea its scent. As an oil it is antiseptic, antibacterial and antifungal, with a lifting effect on mood that few other oils match.
The book pairs it with mallet toe, where the value is the anti-inflammatory action on a chronically irritated joint together with the antiseptic protection of skin that a shoe keeps rubbing.
Like lemon, bergamot is strongly phototoxic — more so, in fact. Bergapten, the compound responsible, causes severe burns on sun-exposed skin. Bergamot-free-of-bergapten (marked FCF) is available and avoids the problem entirely.
