People used to only really make desks and other furniture out of solid wood. Then they would polish that wood with beeswax polish to protect the wood and restore it's luster. Beeswax polish is made from beeswax and turpentine.

Turpentine is made from the distilled sap of pine trees so contains lots of natural terpenes. The main turpenes in turpentine is α-Pinene and β-Pinene, α helps with short term memory, attention span, anxiety etc and β helps with mental clarity, focus, alertness and anxiety again.

Nowadays your lucky to find a new desk that isnt made from plastic veneered chipboard while we wonder why people are overly anxious and no one has an attention span-yes, there are of course other reasons for this too but I dont think anyone really thinks about this at all.