IV.

Edouard de Goncourt, in his novelChérie—the intimate history of a young girl, founded, he states, on much personal observation—describes (Chapter LXXXV) the delight with which sensuous, but chaste young girls often take in strong perfumes. "Perfume and love," he remarks, "impart delights which are closely allied." In an earlier chapter (XLIV) he writes of his heroine at the age of 15: "The intimately happy emotion which the young girl experienced in readingPaul et Virginieand other honestly amorous books she sought to make more complete and intense and penetrating by soaking the book with scent, and the love-story reached her senses and imagination through pages moist with liquid perfume."Carbini (Archivio per l'Antropologia, 1896, fasc. 3) in a very thorough investigation of a large number of children, found that the earliest osmo-gustative sensations occurred in the fourth week in girls, the fifth week in boys; the first real and definite olfactory sensations appeared in the fifteenth month in girls, in the sixteenth in boys; while experiments on several hundred children between the ages of 3 and 6 years showed the girls slightly, but distinctly, superior to the boys. It may, of course, be argued that these results merely show a somewhat greater precocity of girls. I have summarized the main investigations into this question inMan and Woman, revised and enlarged edition, 1904, pp. 134-138. On the whole, they seem to indicate greater olfactory acuteness on the part of women, but the evidence is by no means altogether concordant in this sense. Popular and general scientific opinion is also by no means always in harmony. Thus, Tardif, in his book on odors in relation to the sexual instinct, throughout assumes, as a matter of course, that the sense of smell is most keen in men; while, on the other hand, I note that in a pamphlet by Mr. Martin Perls, a manufacturing perfumer, it is stated with equal confidence that "it is a well-known fact that ladies have, even without a practice of long standing, a keener sense of smell than men," and on this account he employs a staff of young ladies for testing perfumes by smell in the laboratory by the glazed paper test.It is sometimes said that the use of strong perfumes by women indicates a dulled olfactory organ. On the other hand, it is said that the use of tobacco deadens the sensitiveness of the masculine nose. Both these statements seem to be without foundation. The use of a large amount of perfume is rather a question of taste than a question of sensory acuteness (not to mention that those who live in an atmosphere of perfume are, of course, only faintly conscious of it), and the chemist perfumer in his laboratory surrounded by strong odors can distinguish them all with great delicacy. As regards tobacco, in Spain thecigarrerasare women and girls who live perpetually in an atmosphere of tobacco, and Señora Pardo Bazan, who knows them well, remarks in her novel,La Tribuna, which deals with life in a tobacco factory, that "the acuity of the sense of smell of thecigarrerasis notable, and it would seem that instead of blunting the nasal membrane the tobacco makes the olfactory nerves keener.""It was the same as if I was in a sweet apple garden, from the sweetness that came to me when the light wind passed over them and stirred their clothes," a woman is represented as saying concerning a troop of handsome men in the Irish sagas (Cuchulain of Muirthemne, p. 161). The pleasure and excitement experienced by a woman in the odor of her lover is usually felt concerning a vague and mixed odor which may be characteristic, but is not definitely traceable to anyspecific bodily sexual odor. The general odor of the man she loves, one woman states, is highly, sometimes even overwhelmingly, attractive to her; but the specific odor of the male sexual organs which she describes as fishy has no attraction. A man writes that in his relations with women he has never been able to detect that they were influenced by the axillary or other specific odors. A woman writes: "To me any personal odor, as that of perspiration, is very disagreeable, and the healthynakedhuman body is very free from any odor. Fresh perspiration has no disagreeable smell; it is only by retention in the clothing that it becomes objectionable. The faint smell of smoke which lingers round men who smoke much is rather exciting to me, but only when it isveryfaint. If at all strong it becomes disagreeable. As most of the men who have attracted me have been great smokers, there is doubtless a direct association of ideas. It has only once occurred to me that an indifferent unpleasant smell became attractive in connection with some particular person. In this case it was the scent of stale tobacco, such as comes from the end of a cold cigar or cigarette. It was, and is now, very disagreeable to me, but, for the time and in connection with a particular person, it seemed to me more delightful and exciting than the most delicious perfume. I think, however, only a very strong attraction could overcome a dislike of this sort, and I doubt if I could experience such a twist-round if it had been a personal odor. Stale tobacco, though nasty, conveys no mentally disagreeable idea. I mean it does not suggest dirt or unhealthiness."It is probably significant of the somewhat considerable part which, in one way or another, odors and perfumes play in the emotional life of women, that, of the 4 women whose sexual histories are recorded in Appendix B of vol. iii of theseStudies, all are liable to experience sexual effects from olfactory stimuli, 3 of them from personal odors (though this fact is not in every case brought out in the histories as recorded), while of the 8 men not one has considered his olfactory experiences in this respect as worthy of mention.The very marked sexual fascination which odor, associated with the men they love, exerts on women has easily passed unperceived, since women have not felt called upon to proclaim it. In sexual inversion, however, when the woman takes a more active and outspoken part than in normal love, it may very clearly be traced. Here, indeed, it is often exaggerated, in consequence of the common tendency for neurotic and neurasthenic persons to be more than normally susceptible to the influence of odors. In the majority of inverted women, it may safely be said, the odor of the beloved person plays a very considerable part. Thus, one inverted woman asks the woman she loves to send her some of her hair that she may intoxicate herself in solitude with its perfume (Archivio di Psicopatie Sessuali, vol. i, fasc. 3, p. 36). Again,a young girl with some homosexual tendencies, was apt to experience sexual emotions when in ordinary contact with schoolfellows whose body odor was marked (Féré,L'Instinct Sexuel, p. 260). Such examples are fairly typical.That the body odor of men may in a large number of cases be highly agreeable and sexually attractive is shown by the testimony of male sexual inverts. There is abundant evidence to this effect. Raffalovich (L'Uranisme et l'Unisexualité, p. 126) insists on the importance of body odors as a sexual attraction to the male invert, and is inclined to think that the increased odor of the man's own body during sexual excitement may have an auto-aphrodisiacal effect which is reflected on the body of the loved person. The odor of peasants, of men who work in the open air, is specially apt to be found attractive. Moll mentions the case of an inverted man who found the "forest, mosslike odor" of a schoolfellow irresistibly attractive.The following passage from a letter written by an Italian marquis has been sent to me: "Bonifazio stripped one evening, to give me pleasure. He has the full, rounded flesh and amber coloring which painters of the Giorgione school gave to their S. Sebastians. When he began to dress, I took up an oldfascia, or girdle of netted silk, which was lying under his breeches, and which still preserved the warmth of his body. I buried my face in it, and was half inebriated by its exquisite aroma of young manhood and fresh hay. He told me he had worn it for two years. No wonder it was redolent of him. I asked him to let me keep it as a souvenir. He smiled and said: 'You like it because it has lain so long upon mypanoia.' 'Yes, just so,' I replied; 'whenever I kiss it, thus and thus, it will bring you back to me.' Sometimes I tie it round my naked waist before I go to bed. The smell of it is enough to cause a powerful erection, and the contact of its fringes with my testicles and phallus has once or twice produced an involuntary emission."I may here reproduce a communication which has reached me concerning the attractiveness of the odor of peasants: "One predominant attraction of these men is that they are pure and clean; their bodies in a state of healthy normal function. Then they possess, if they are temperate, what the Greek poet Straton called the φυδικὴ χρωτὸς (a quality which, according to this authority, is never found in women). This 'natural fair perfume of the flesh' is a peculiar attribute of young men who live in the open air and deal with natural objects. Even their perspiration has an odor very different from that of girls in ball-rooms: more refined, ethereal, pervasive, delicate, and difficult to seize. When they have handled hay—in the time of hay-harvest, or in winter, when they bring hay down from mountain huts—the youthful peasants carry about with them the smell of 'a field theLord hath blessed.' Their bodies and their clothes exhale an indefinable fragrance of purity and sex combined. Every gland of the robust frame seems to have accumulated scent from herbs and grasses, which slowly exudes from the cool, fresh skin of the lad. You do not perceive it in a room. You must take the young man's hands and bury your face in them, or be covered with him under the same blanket in one bed, to feel this aroma. No sensual impression on the nerves of smell is more poignantly impregnated with spiritual poetry—the poetry of adolescence, and early hours upon the hills, and labor cheerfully accomplished, and the harvest of God's gifts to man brought home by human industry. It is worth mentioning that Aristophanes, in his description of the perfect Athenian Ephebus, dwells upon his being redolent of natural perfumes."In a passage in the second part ofFaustGoethe (who appears to have felt considerable interest in the psychology of smell) makes three women speak concerning the ambrosiacal odor of young men.In this connection, also, I note a passage in a poem ("Appleton House") by our own English poet Marvell, which it is of interest to quote:—

Carbini (Archivio per l'Antropologia, 1896, fasc. 3) in a very thorough investigation of a large number of children, found that the earliest osmo-gustative sensations occurred in the fourth week in girls, the fifth week in boys; the first real and definite olfactory sensations appeared in the fifteenth month in girls, in the sixteenth in boys; while experiments on several hundred children between the ages of 3 and 6 years showed the girls slightly, but distinctly, superior to the boys. It may, of course, be argued that these results merely show a somewhat greater precocity of girls. I have summarized the main investigations into this question inMan and Woman, revised and enlarged edition, 1904, pp. 134-138. On the whole, they seem to indicate greater olfactory acuteness on the part of women, but the evidence is by no means altogether concordant in this sense. Popular and general scientific opinion is also by no means always in harmony. Thus, Tardif, in his book on odors in relation to the sexual instinct, throughout assumes, as a matter of course, that the sense of smell is most keen in men; while, on the other hand, I note that in a pamphlet by Mr. Martin Perls, a manufacturing perfumer, it is stated with equal confidence that "it is a well-known fact that ladies have, even without a practice of long standing, a keener sense of smell than men," and on this account he employs a staff of young ladies for testing perfumes by smell in the laboratory by the glazed paper test.

It is sometimes said that the use of strong perfumes by women indicates a dulled olfactory organ. On the other hand, it is said that the use of tobacco deadens the sensitiveness of the masculine nose. Both these statements seem to be without foundation. The use of a large amount of perfume is rather a question of taste than a question of sensory acuteness (not to mention that those who live in an atmosphere of perfume are, of course, only faintly conscious of it), and the chemist perfumer in his laboratory surrounded by strong odors can distinguish them all with great delicacy. As regards tobacco, in Spain thecigarrerasare women and girls who live perpetually in an atmosphere of tobacco, and Señora Pardo Bazan, who knows them well, remarks in her novel,La Tribuna, which deals with life in a tobacco factory, that "the acuity of the sense of smell of thecigarrerasis notable, and it would seem that instead of blunting the nasal membrane the tobacco makes the olfactory nerves keener."

"It was the same as if I was in a sweet apple garden, from the sweetness that came to me when the light wind passed over them and stirred their clothes," a woman is represented as saying concerning a troop of handsome men in the Irish sagas (Cuchulain of Muirthemne, p. 161). The pleasure and excitement experienced by a woman in the odor of her lover is usually felt concerning a vague and mixed odor which may be characteristic, but is not definitely traceable to anyspecific bodily sexual odor. The general odor of the man she loves, one woman states, is highly, sometimes even overwhelmingly, attractive to her; but the specific odor of the male sexual organs which she describes as fishy has no attraction. A man writes that in his relations with women he has never been able to detect that they were influenced by the axillary or other specific odors. A woman writes: "To me any personal odor, as that of perspiration, is very disagreeable, and the healthynakedhuman body is very free from any odor. Fresh perspiration has no disagreeable smell; it is only by retention in the clothing that it becomes objectionable. The faint smell of smoke which lingers round men who smoke much is rather exciting to me, but only when it isveryfaint. If at all strong it becomes disagreeable. As most of the men who have attracted me have been great smokers, there is doubtless a direct association of ideas. It has only once occurred to me that an indifferent unpleasant smell became attractive in connection with some particular person. In this case it was the scent of stale tobacco, such as comes from the end of a cold cigar or cigarette. It was, and is now, very disagreeable to me, but, for the time and in connection with a particular person, it seemed to me more delightful and exciting than the most delicious perfume. I think, however, only a very strong attraction could overcome a dislike of this sort, and I doubt if I could experience such a twist-round if it had been a personal odor. Stale tobacco, though nasty, conveys no mentally disagreeable idea. I mean it does not suggest dirt or unhealthiness."

It is probably significant of the somewhat considerable part which, in one way or another, odors and perfumes play in the emotional life of women, that, of the 4 women whose sexual histories are recorded in Appendix B of vol. iii of theseStudies, all are liable to experience sexual effects from olfactory stimuli, 3 of them from personal odors (though this fact is not in every case brought out in the histories as recorded), while of the 8 men not one has considered his olfactory experiences in this respect as worthy of mention.

The very marked sexual fascination which odor, associated with the men they love, exerts on women has easily passed unperceived, since women have not felt called upon to proclaim it. In sexual inversion, however, when the woman takes a more active and outspoken part than in normal love, it may very clearly be traced. Here, indeed, it is often exaggerated, in consequence of the common tendency for neurotic and neurasthenic persons to be more than normally susceptible to the influence of odors. In the majority of inverted women, it may safely be said, the odor of the beloved person plays a very considerable part. Thus, one inverted woman asks the woman she loves to send her some of her hair that she may intoxicate herself in solitude with its perfume (Archivio di Psicopatie Sessuali, vol. i, fasc. 3, p. 36). Again,a young girl with some homosexual tendencies, was apt to experience sexual emotions when in ordinary contact with schoolfellows whose body odor was marked (Féré,L'Instinct Sexuel, p. 260). Such examples are fairly typical.

That the body odor of men may in a large number of cases be highly agreeable and sexually attractive is shown by the testimony of male sexual inverts. There is abundant evidence to this effect. Raffalovich (L'Uranisme et l'Unisexualité, p. 126) insists on the importance of body odors as a sexual attraction to the male invert, and is inclined to think that the increased odor of the man's own body during sexual excitement may have an auto-aphrodisiacal effect which is reflected on the body of the loved person. The odor of peasants, of men who work in the open air, is specially apt to be found attractive. Moll mentions the case of an inverted man who found the "forest, mosslike odor" of a schoolfellow irresistibly attractive.

The following passage from a letter written by an Italian marquis has been sent to me: "Bonifazio stripped one evening, to give me pleasure. He has the full, rounded flesh and amber coloring which painters of the Giorgione school gave to their S. Sebastians. When he began to dress, I took up an oldfascia, or girdle of netted silk, which was lying under his breeches, and which still preserved the warmth of his body. I buried my face in it, and was half inebriated by its exquisite aroma of young manhood and fresh hay. He told me he had worn it for two years. No wonder it was redolent of him. I asked him to let me keep it as a souvenir. He smiled and said: 'You like it because it has lain so long upon mypanoia.' 'Yes, just so,' I replied; 'whenever I kiss it, thus and thus, it will bring you back to me.' Sometimes I tie it round my naked waist before I go to bed. The smell of it is enough to cause a powerful erection, and the contact of its fringes with my testicles and phallus has once or twice produced an involuntary emission."

I may here reproduce a communication which has reached me concerning the attractiveness of the odor of peasants: "One predominant attraction of these men is that they are pure and clean; their bodies in a state of healthy normal function. Then they possess, if they are temperate, what the Greek poet Straton called the φυδικὴ χρωτὸς (a quality which, according to this authority, is never found in women). This 'natural fair perfume of the flesh' is a peculiar attribute of young men who live in the open air and deal with natural objects. Even their perspiration has an odor very different from that of girls in ball-rooms: more refined, ethereal, pervasive, delicate, and difficult to seize. When they have handled hay—in the time of hay-harvest, or in winter, when they bring hay down from mountain huts—the youthful peasants carry about with them the smell of 'a field theLord hath blessed.' Their bodies and their clothes exhale an indefinable fragrance of purity and sex combined. Every gland of the robust frame seems to have accumulated scent from herbs and grasses, which slowly exudes from the cool, fresh skin of the lad. You do not perceive it in a room. You must take the young man's hands and bury your face in them, or be covered with him under the same blanket in one bed, to feel this aroma. No sensual impression on the nerves of smell is more poignantly impregnated with spiritual poetry—the poetry of adolescence, and early hours upon the hills, and labor cheerfully accomplished, and the harvest of God's gifts to man brought home by human industry. It is worth mentioning that Aristophanes, in his description of the perfect Athenian Ephebus, dwells upon his being redolent of natural perfumes."

In a passage in the second part ofFaustGoethe (who appears to have felt considerable interest in the psychology of smell) makes three women speak concerning the ambrosiacal odor of young men.

In this connection, also, I note a passage in a poem ("Appleton House") by our own English poet Marvell, which it is of interest to quote:—

"And now the careless victors play,Dancing the triumphs of the hay,When every mower's wholesome heatSmells like an Alexander's sweat.Their females fragrant as the meadWhich they in fairy circles tread,When at their dance's end they kiss,Their new-mown hay not sweeter is."

[30]

R. Andree, "Völkergeruch," inEthnographische Parallelen, Neue Folge, 1889, pp. 213-222, brings together many passages describing the odors of various peoples. Hagen,Sexuelle Osphrésiologie, pp. 166et seq., has a chapter on the subject; Joest, supplement toInternational Archiv für Ethnographie, 1893, p. 53, has an interesting passage on the smells of various races, as also Waitz,Introduction to Anthropology, p. 103.Cf.Sir H. H. Johnston,British Central Africa, p. 395; T. H. Parke,Experiences in Equatorial Africa, p. 409; E. H. Man,Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1889, p. 391; Brough Smyth,Aborigines of Victoria, vol. i, p. 7; d'Orbigny,L'Homme Américain, vol. i, p. 87, etc.

[31]

B. Adachi "Geruch der Europaer,"Globus, 1903, No. 1.

[32]

Hagen quotes testimonies on this point,Sexuelle Osphrésiologie, p. 173. The negro, Castellani states, considers that Europeans have a smell of death.

[33]

Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition, vol. ii, p. 181.

[34]

Waitz,Introduction to Anthropology, p. 103.

[35]

Monin,Les Odeurs du Corps Humain, second edition, Paris, 1886, discusses briefly but comprehensively the normal and more especially the pathological odors of the body and of its secretions and excretions.

[36]

Venturi,Degenerazione Psicho-sessuale, p. 417.

[37]

Quoted by Féré,L'Instinct Sexuel, 1902, p. 133.

[38]

H. Ling Roth, "On Salutations,"Journal of the Anthropological Institute, November, 1889.

[39]

See Appendix A: "The Origins of the Kiss."

[40]

See,e.g., passage quoted by I. Bloch,Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, p. 205.

[41]

It must at the same time be remembered that the more or less degree of exposure involved by sexual intercourse is itself a cause of nasal congestion and sneezing.

[42]

Féré,Pathologie des Emotions, p. 81

[43]

J. N. Mackenzie similarly suggests (Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, No. 82, 1898) that "irritation and congestion of the nasal mucous membrane precede, or are the excitants of, the olfactory impression that forms the connecting link between the sense of smell and erethism of the reproductive organs exhibited in the lower animals."

[44]

Les Odeurs dans les Romans de Zola, Montpellier, 1889.

[45]

Toulouse,Emile Zola, pp. 163-165, 173-175.

[46]

P. J. Möbius,Das Pathologische bei Nietzsche.

[47]

Moll has a passage on the sense of smell in the blind, more especially in sexual respects,Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, bd. 1, pp. 137et seq.

[48]

See, for instance, his poem, "Love Perfumes all Parts," in which he declares that "Hands and thighs and legs are all richly aromatical." And compare the lyrics entitled "A Song to the Maskers," "On Julia's Breath," "Upon Julia's Unlacing Herself," "Upon Julia's Sweat," and "To Mistress Anne Soame."

[49]

There are various indications that Goethe was attentive to the attraction of personal odors; and that he experienced this attraction himself is shown by the fact that, as he confessed, when he once had to leave Weimar on an official journey for two days he took a bodice of Frau von Stein's away in order to carry the scent of her body with him.

[50]

Hagen has brought together from the literature of the subject a number of typical cases of olfactory fetichism,Sexuelle Osphrésiologie, 1901, pp. 82et seq.

[51]

Moll's inquiries among normal persons have also shown that few people are conscious of odor as a sexual attraction. (Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis. Bd. I, p. 133.)

[52]

Marro,La, Pubertà, 1898, Chapter II. Tardif found in boys that perfumes exerted little or no influence on circulation and respiration before puberty, though his observations on this point were too few to carry weight.

The Influence of Perfumes—Their Aboriginal Relationship to Sexual Body Odors—This True even of the Fragrance of Flowers—The Synthetic Manufacture of Perfumes—The Sexual Effects of Perfumes—Perfumes perhaps Originally Used to Heighten the Body Odors—The Special Significance of the Musk Odor—Its Wide Natural Diffusion in Plants and Animals and Man—Musk a Powerful Stimulant—Its Widespread Use as a Perfume—Peau d'Espagne—The Smell of Leather and its Occasional Sexual Effects—The Sexual Influence of the Odors of Flowers—The Identity of many Plant Odors with Certain Normal and Abnormal Body Odors—The Smell of Semen in this Connection.

So far we have been mainly concerned with purely personal odors. It is, however, no longer possible to confine the discussion of the sexual significance of odor within the purely animal limit. The various characteristics of personal odor which have been noted—alike those which tend to make it repulsive and those which tend to make it attractive—have led to the use of artificial perfumes, to heighten the natural odor when it is regarded as attractive, to disguise it when it is regarded as repellent; while at the same time, happily covering both of these impulses, has developed the pure delight in perfume for its own agreeableness, the æsthetic side of olfaction. In this way—although in a much less constant and less elaborate manner—the body became adorned to the sense of smell just as by clothing and ornament it is adorned to the sense of sight.

But—and this is a point of great significance from our present standpoint—we do not really leave the sexual sphere by introducing artificial perfumes. The perfumes which we extract from natural products, or, as is now frequently the case, produce by chemical synthesis, are themselves either actually animal sexual odors or allied in character or composition, to the personal odors they are used to heighten or disguise. Musk is the product of glands of the maleMoschus moschiferuswhich correspond to preputial sebaceous glands;castoreum is the product of similar sexual glands in the beaver, and civet likewise from the civet; ambergris is an intestinal calculus found in the rectum of the cachelot.[53]Not only, however, are nearly all the perfumes of animal origin, in use by civilized man, odors which have a specially sexual object among the animals from which they are derived, but even the perfumes of flowers may be said to be of sexual character. They are given out at the reproductive period in the lives of plants, and they clearly have very largely as their object an appeal to the insects who secure plant fertilization, such appeal having as its basis the fact that among insects themselves olfactory sensibility has in many cases been developed in their own mating.[54]There is, for example, a moth in which both sexes are similarly and inconspicuously marked, but the males diffuse an agreeable odor, said to be like pineapple, which attracts the females.[55]If, therefore, the odors of flowers have developed because they proved useful to the plant by attracting insects or other living creatures, it is obvious that the advantage would lie with those plants which could put forth an animal sexual odor of agreeable character, since such an odor would prove fascinating to animal creatures. We here have a very simple explanation of the fundamental identity of odors in the animal and vegetable worlds. It thus comes about that from a psychological point of view we are not really entering a new field when we begin to discuss the influence of perfumes other than those of the animal body. We are merely concerned with somewhat more complex or somewhat more refined sexual odors; they are not specifically different from the human odors and they mingle with them harmoniously. Popular language bearswitness to the truth of this statement, and the normal and abnormal human odors, as we have already seen, are constantly compared to artificial, animal, and plant odors, to chloroform, to musk, to violet, to mention only those similitudes which seem to occur most frequently.

The methods now employed for obtaining the perfumes universally used in civilized lands are three: (1) the extraction of odoriferous compounds from the neutral products in which they occur; (2) the artificial preparation of naturally occurring odoriferous compounds by synthetic processes; (3) the manufacture of materials which yield odors resembling those of pleasant smelling natural objects. (See,e.g., "Natural and Artificial Perfumes,"Nature, December 27, 1900.) The essential principles of most of our perfumes belong to the complex class of organic compounds known as terpenes. During recent years a number of the essential elements of natural perfumes have been studied, in many cases the methods of preparing them artificially discovered, and they are largely replacing the use of natural perfumes not only for soaps, etc., but for scent essences, though it appears to be very difficult to imitate exactly the delicate fragrance achieved by Nature. Artificial musk was discovered accidentally by Bauer when studying the butyltoluenes contained in a resin extractive. Vanillin, the odoriferous principle of the vanilla bean, is an aldehyde which was first artificially prepared by Tiemann and Haarmann in 1874 by oxidizing coniferin, a glucoside contained in the sap of various coniferæ, but it now appears to be usually manufactured from eugenol, a phenol contained in oil of cloves. Piperonal, an aldehyde closely allied to vanillin, is used in perfumery under the name of heliotropin and is prepared from oil of sassafras and oil of camphor. Cumarine, the material to which tonka bean, sweet woodruff, and new-mown hay owe their characteristic odors, was synthetically prepared by W. H. Parkin in 1868 by heating sodiosalicylic aldehyde with acetic anhydride, though now more cheaply prepared from an herb growing in Florida. Irone, which has the perfume of violets, was isolated in 1893 from a ketone contained in orris-root; and ionone, another ketone which has a very closely similar odor of fresh violets and was isolated after some years' further work, is largely used in the preparation of violet perfume. Irone and ionone are closely similar in composition to oil of turpentine which when taken into the body is partly converted into perfume and gives a strong odor of violets to the urine. "Little has yet been accomplished toward ascertaining the relation between the odor and the chemical constitution of substances in general. Hydrocarbons as a class possess considerable similarity in odor, so also do the organic sulphides and, to a muchsmaller extent, the ketones. The subject waits for some one to correlate its various physiological, psychological and physical aspects in the same way that Helmholtz did for sound. It seems, as yet, impossible to assign any probable reason to the fact that many substances have a pleasant odor. It may, however, be worth suggesting that certain compounds, such as the volatile sulphides and the indoles, have very unpleasant odors because they are normal constituents of mammalian excreta and of putrefied animal products; the repulsive odors may be simply necessary results of evolutionary processes." (Loc. cit.,Nature, December 27, 1900.)Many of the perfumes in use are really combinations of a great many different odors in varying proportions, such as oil of rose, lavender oil, ylang-ylang, etc. The most highly appreciated perfumes are often made up of elements which in stronger proportion would be regarded as highly unpleasant.In the study and manufacture of perfumes Germany and France have taken the lead in recent times. The industry is one of great importance. In France alone the trade in perfumes amounts to £4,000,000.

Many of the perfumes in use are really combinations of a great many different odors in varying proportions, such as oil of rose, lavender oil, ylang-ylang, etc. The most highly appreciated perfumes are often made up of elements which in stronger proportion would be regarded as highly unpleasant.

In the study and manufacture of perfumes Germany and France have taken the lead in recent times. The industry is one of great importance. In France alone the trade in perfumes amounts to £4,000,000.

It is doubtless largely owing to the essential and fundamental identity of odors—to the chemical resemblances even of odors from the most widely remote sources—that we find that perfumes in many cases have the same sexual effects as are primitively possessed by the body odors. In northern countries, where the use of perfumes is chiefly cultivated by women, it is by women that this sexual influence is most liable to be felt. In the South and in the East it appears to be at least equally often experienced by men. Thus, in Italy Mantegazza remarks that "many men of strong sexual temperament cannot visit with impunity a laboratory of essences and perfumes."[56]In the East we find it stated in the Islamic book entitledThe Perfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaouithat the use of perfumes by women, as well as by men, excites to the generative act. It is largely in reliance on this fact that in many parts of the world, especially among Eastern peoples and occasionally among ourselves in Europe, women have been accustomed to perfume the body and especially the vulva.[57]

It seems highly probable that, as has been especially emphasized by Hagen, perfumes were primitively used by women, not as is sometimes the case in civilization, with the idea of disguising any possible natural odor, but with the object of heightening and fortifying the natural odor.[58]If the primitive man was inclined to disparage a woman whose odor was slight or imperceptible,—turning away from her with contempt, as the Polynesian turned away from the ladies of Sydney: "They have no smell!"—women would inevitably seek to supplement any natural defects in this respect, and to accentuate their odorous qualities, in the same way as by corsets and bustles, even in civilization, they have sought to accentuate the sexual saliencies of their bodies. In this way we may, as Hagen suggests, explain the fact that until recent times the odors preferred by women have not been the most delicate or exquisite, but the strongest, the most animal, the most sexual: musk, castoreum, civet, and ambergris.

In that interesting novel—dealing with the adventures of a Jewish maiden at the Persian court of Xerxes—which under the title ofEstherhas found its way into the Old Testament we are told that it was customary in the royal harem at Shushan to submit the women to a very prolonged course of perfuming before they were admitted to the king: "six months with oil of myrrh and six months with sweet odors." (Esther, Chapter II, v. 12.)In theArabian Nightsthere are many allusions to the use of perfumes by women with a more or less definitely stated aphrodisiacal intent. Thus we read in the story of Kamaralzaman: "With fine incense I will perfume my breasts, my belly, my whole body, so that my skin may melt more sweetly in thy mouth, O apple of my eye!"Even among savages the perfuming of the body is sometimes practiced with the object of inducing love in the partner. Schellong states that the Papuans of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land rub various fragrant plants into their bodies for this purpose. (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1899, ht. i, p. 19.) The significance of this practice is more fully revealed by Haddon when studying the Papuans of Torres Straits among whom the initiative in courtship is taken by the women. It was by scentinghimself with a pungent odorous substance that a young man indicated that he was ready to be sued by the girls. A man would wear this scent at the back of his neck during a dance in order to attract the attention of a particular girl; it was believed to act with magical certainty, after the manner of a charm (Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, pp. 211, 222, and 328).

In theArabian Nightsthere are many allusions to the use of perfumes by women with a more or less definitely stated aphrodisiacal intent. Thus we read in the story of Kamaralzaman: "With fine incense I will perfume my breasts, my belly, my whole body, so that my skin may melt more sweetly in thy mouth, O apple of my eye!"

Even among savages the perfuming of the body is sometimes practiced with the object of inducing love in the partner. Schellong states that the Papuans of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land rub various fragrant plants into their bodies for this purpose. (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1899, ht. i, p. 19.) The significance of this practice is more fully revealed by Haddon when studying the Papuans of Torres Straits among whom the initiative in courtship is taken by the women. It was by scentinghimself with a pungent odorous substance that a young man indicated that he was ready to be sued by the girls. A man would wear this scent at the back of his neck during a dance in order to attract the attention of a particular girl; it was believed to act with magical certainty, after the manner of a charm (Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, pp. 211, 222, and 328).

The perfume which is of all perfumes the most interesting from the present point of view is certainly musk. With ambergris, musk is the chief member of Linnæus's group ofOdores ambrosiacæ, a group which in sexual significances, as Zwaardemaker remarks, ranks besides the capryl group of odors. It is a perfume of ancient origin; its name is Persian[59](indicating doubtless the channel whence it reached Europe) and ultimately derived from the Sanskrit word for testicle in allusion to the fact that it was contained in a pouch removed from the sexual parts of the male musk-deer. Musk odors, however, often of considerable strength, are very widely distributed in Nature, alike among animals and plants. This is indicated by the frequency with which the word "musk" forms part of the names of animals and plants which are by no means always nearly related. We have the musk-ox, the musky mole, several species called musk-rat, the musk-duct, the musk-beetle; while among plants which have received their names from a real or supposed musky odor are, besides several that are called musk-plant, the musk-rose, the musk-hyacinth, the musk-mallow, the musk-orchid, the musk-melon, the musk-cherry, the musk-pear, the musk-plum, muskat and muscatels, musk-seed, musk-tree, musk-wood, etc.[60]But a musky odor is not merely widespread in Nature among plants and the lower animals, it is peculiarly associated with man. Incidentally we have already seen how it is regarded as characteristic of some races of man, especially the Chinese. Moreover, the smell of the negress is said to be musky in character, andamong Europeans a musky odor is said to be characteristic of blondes. Laycock, in hisNervous Diseases of Women, stated his opinion that "the musk odor is certainly the sexual odor of man"; and Féré states that the musk odor is that among natural perfumes most nearly approaching the odor of the sexual secretions. We have seen that the Chinese poet vaunts the musky odor of his mistress's armpits, while another Oriental saying concerning the attractive woman is that "her navel is filled with musk." Persian literature contains many references to musk as an attractive body odor, and Firdusi speaks of a woman's hair as "a crown of musk," while the Arabian poet Motannabi says of his mistress that "her hyacinthine hair smells sweeter than Scythian musk." Galopin stated that he knew women whose natural odor of musk (and less frequently of ambergris) was sufficiently strong to impart to a bath in less than an hour a perfume due entirely to the exhalations of the musky body; it must be added that Galopin was an enthusiast in this matter.

The special significance of musk from our present point of view lies not only in the fact that we here have a perfume, widely scattered throughout nature and often in an agreeable form, which is at the same time a very frequent personal odor in man. Musk is the odor which not only in the animals to which it has given a name, but in many others, is a specifically sexual odor, chiefly emitted during the sexual season. The sexual odors, indeed, of most animals seem to be modifications of musk. The Sphinx moth has a musky odor which is confined to the male and is doubtless sexual. Some lizards have a musky odor which is heightened at the sexual season; crocodiles during the pairing season emit from their submaxillary glands a musky odor which pervades their haunts. In the same way elephants emit a musky odor from their facial glands during the rutting season. The odor of the musk-duck is chiefly confined to the breeding season.[61]The musky odor of the negress is said to be heightened during sexual excitement.

The predominance of musk as a sexual odor is associated with the fact that its actual nervous influence, apart from the presence of sexual association, is very considerable. Féré found it to be a powerful muscular stimulant. In former times musk enjoyed a high reputation as a cardiac stimulant; it fell into disuse, but in recent years its use in asthenic states has been revived, and excellent results, it has been claimed, have followed its administration in cases of collapse from Asiatic cholera. For sexual torpor in women it still has (like vanilla and sandal) a certain degree of reputation, though it is not often used, and some of the old Arabian physicians (especially Avicenna) recommended it, with castoreum and myrrh, for amenorrhœa. Its powerful action is indicated by the experience of Esquirol, who stated that he had seen cases in which sensory stimulation by musk in women during lactation had produced mania. It has always had the reputation, more especially in the Mohammedan East, of being a sexual stimulant to men; "the noblest of perfumes," it is called inEl Ktab, "and that which most provokes to venery."

It is doubtless a fact significant of the special sexual effects of musk that, as Laycock remarked, in cases of special idiosyncrasy to odors, musk appears to be that odor which is most liked or disliked. Thus, the old English physician Whytt remarked that "several delicate women who could easily bear the stronger smell of tobacco have been thrown into fits by musk, ambergris, or a pale rose."[62]It may be remarked that in thePerfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaouiit is stated that it is by their sexual effects that perfumes tend to throw women into a kind of swoon, and Lucretius remarks that a woman who smells castoreum, another animal sexual perfume, at the time of her menstrual period may swoon.[63]

Not only is musk the most cherished perfume of the Islamic world, and the special favorite of the Prophet himself, who greatly delighted in perfumes ("I love your world," he is reported to have said in old age, "for its women and its perfumes"),[64]it is the only perfume generally used by the women of a land in which the refinements of life have been carried so far as Japan, and they received it from the Chinese.[65]

Moreover, musk is still the most popular of European perfumes. It is the perfumes containing musk, Piesse states in his well-known book on theArt of Perfumery, which sell best. It is certainly true that in its simple form the odor of musk is not nowadays highly considered in Europe. This fact is connected with the ever-growing refinement in accordance with which the specific odors of the sexual regions in human beings tend to lose their primitive attractiveness and bodily odors generally become mingled with artificial perfumes and so disguised. But, although musk in its simple form, and under its ancient name, has lost its hold in Europe, it is an interesting and significant fact that it is still the perfumes which contain musk that are the most widely popular.

Peau d'Espagne may be mentioned as a highly complex and luxurious perfume, often the favorite scent of sensuous persons, which really owes a large part of its potency to the presence of the crude animal sexual odors of musk and civet. It consists of wash-leather steeped in ottos of neroli, rose, santal, lavender, verbena, bergamot, cloves, and cinnamon, subsequently smeared with civet and musk. It is said by some, probably with a certain degree of truth, that Peau d'Espagne is ofall perfumes that which most nearly approaches the odor of a woman's skin; whether it also suggests the odor of leather is not so clear.

There is, however, no doubt that the smell of leather has a curiously stimulating sexual influence on many men and women. It is an odor which seems to occupy an intermediate place between the natural body odors and the artificial perfumes for which it sometimes serves as a basis; possibly it is to this fact that its occasional sexual influence is owing, for, as we have already seen, there is a tendency for sexual allurement to attach to odors which are not the specific personal body odors but yet are related to them. Moll considers, no doubt rightly, that shoe fetichism, perhaps the most frequent of sexual fetichistic perversions, is greatly favored, if, indeed, it does not owe its origin to, the associated odor of the feet and of the shoes.[66]He narrates a case of shoe fetichism in a man in which the perversion began at the age of 6; when for the first time he wore new shoes, having previously used only the left-off shoes of his elder brother; he felt and smelt these new shoes with sensations of unmeasured pleasure; and a few years later began to use shoes as a method of masturbation.[67]Näcke has also recorded the case of a shoe fetichist who declared that the sexual attraction of shoes (usually his wife's) lay largely in the odor of the leather.[68]Krafft-Ebing, again, brings forward a case of shoe fetichism in which the significant fact is mentioned that the subject bought a pair of leather cuffs to smell while masturbating.[69]Restif de la Bretonne, who was somewhat of a shoe fetichist, appears to have enjoyed smelling shoes. It is not probable that the odor of leather explains the whole of shoe fetichism,—as we shall see when, in another "Study," this question comes before us—and in many cases it cannot be said to enter at all; it is, however, one of the factors. Such a conclusionis further supported by the fact that by many the odor of new shoes is sometimes desired as an adjuvant to coitus. It is in the experience of prostitutes that such a device is not infrequent. Näcke mentions that a colleague of his was informed by a prostitute that several of her clients desired the odor of new shoes in the room, and that she was accustomed to obtain the desired perfume by holding her shoes for a moment over the flame of a spirit lamp.

The direct sexual influence of the odor of leather is, however, more conclusively proved by those instances in which it exists apart from shoes or other objects having any connection with the human body. I have elsewhere in these "Studies"[71]recorded the case of a lady, entirely normal in sexual and other respects, who is conscious of a considerable degree of pleasurable sexual excitement in the presence of the smell of leather objects, more especially of leather-bound ledgers and in shops where leather objects are sold. She thinks this dates from the period when, as a child of 9, she was sometimes left alone for a time on a high stool in an office. A possible explanation in this case lies in the supposition that on one of these early occasions sexual excitement was produced by the contact with the stool (in a way that is not infrequent in young girls) and that the accidentally associated odor of leather permanently affected the nervous system, while the really significant contact left no permanent impression. Even on such a supposition it might, however, still be maintained that a real potency of the leather odor is illustrated by this case, and this is likewise suggested by the fact that the same subject is also sexually affected by various perfumes and odorous flowers not recalling leather.[70]

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