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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 of all 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 conclusion is 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]
It has been suggested to me by a lady that the odor of leather suggests
that of the sexual organs. The same suggestion is made by Hagen,[72] and I
find it stated by Gould and Pyle that menstruating girls sometimes smell
of leather. The secret of its influence may thus be not altogether
obscure; in the fact that leather is animal skin, and that it may thus
vaguely stir the olfactory sensibilities which had been ancestrally
affected by the sexual stimulus of the skin odor lies the probable
foundation of the mystery.
In the absence of all suggestion of personal or animal odors, in its most
exquisite forms in the fragrance of flowers, olfactory sensations are
still very frequently of a voluptuous character.
Mantegazza has remarked
that it is a proof of the close connection between the sense of smell and
the sexual organs that the expression of pleasure produced by olfaction
resembles the expression of sexual pleasures.[73] Make the chastest woman
smell the flowers she likes best, he remarks, and she will close her eyes,
breathe deeply, and, if very sensitive, tremble all over, presenting an
intimate picture which otherwise she never shows, except perhaps to her
lover. He mentions a lady who said: "I sometimes feel such pleasure in
smelling flowers that I seem to be committing a sin."[74] It is really the
case that in many persons--usually, if not exclusively, women--the odor of
flowers produces not only a highly pleasurable, but a distinctly and
specifically sexual, effect. I have met with numerous cases in which this
effect was well marked. It is usually white flowers with heavy,
penetrating odors which exert this influence. Thus, one lady (who is
similarly affected by various perfumes, forget-me-nots, ylang-ylang,
etc.) finds that a number of flowers produce on her a definite sexual
effect, with moistening of the pudenda. This effect is especially produced
by white flowers like the gardenia, tuberose, etc.
Another lady, who lives
in India, has a similar experience with flowers. She writes: A scent to
cause me sexual excitement must be somewhat heavy and _penetrating_.
Nearly all white flowers so affect me and many Indian flowers with heavy,
almost pungent scents. (All the flower scents are quite unconnected with
me with any individual.) Tuberose, lilies of the valley, and frangipani
flowers have an almost intoxicating effect on me.
Violets, roses,
mignonette, and many others, though very delicious, give me no sexual
feeling at all. For this reason the line, 'The lilies and languors of
virtue for the roses and raptures of vice' seems all wrong to me. The lily
seems to me a very sensual flower, while the rose and its scent seem very
good and countrified and virtuous. Shelley's description of the lily of
the valley, 'whom youth makes so fair and _passion_ so pale,' falls in
much more with my ideas. "I can quite understand," she adds, "that
leather, especially of books, might have an exciting effect, as the smell
has this _penetrating_ quality, but I do not think it produces any special
feeling in me." This more sensuous character of white flowers is fairly
obvious to many persons who do not experience from them any specifically
sexual effects. To some people lilies have an odor which they describe as
sexual, although these persons may be quite unaware that Hindu authors
long since described the vulvar secretion of the _Padmini_, or perfect
woman, during coitus, as "perfumed like the lily that has newly
burst."[75] It is noteworthy that it was more especially the white
flowers--lily, tuberose, etc.--which were long ago noted by Cloquet as
liable to cause various unpleasant nervous effects, cardiac oppression and
syncope.[76]
When we are concerned with the fragrances of flowers it would seem that we
are far removed from the human sexual field, and that their sexual effects
are inexplicable. It is not so. The animal and vegetable odors, as,
indeed, we have already seen, are very closely connected. The recorded
cases are very numerous in which human persons have exhaled from their
skins--sometimes in a very pronounced degree--the odors of plants and
flowers, of violets, of roses, of pineapple, of vanilla.
On the other
hand, there are various plant odors which distinctly recall, not merely
the general odor of the human body, but even the specifically sexual
odors. A rare garden weed, the stinking goosefoot, _Chenopodium vulvaria_,
it is well known, possesses a herring brine or putrid fish odor--due, it
appears, to propylamin, which is also found in the flowers of the common
white thorn or mayflower (_Cratægus oxyacantha_) and many others of the
_Rosaceæ_--which recalls the odor of the animal and human sexual
regions.[77] The reason is that both plant and animal odors belong
chemically to the same group of capryl odors (Linnæus's _Odores hircini_),
so called from the goat, the most important group of odors from the sexual
point of view. Caproic and capryl acid are contained not only in the odor
of the goat and in human sweat, and in animal products as many cheeses,
but also in various plants, such as Herb Robert (_Geranium robertianum_),
and the Stinking St. John's worts (_Hypericum hircinum_), as well as the
_Chenopodium_. Zwaardemaker considers it probable that the odor of the
vagina belongs to the same group, as well as the odor of semen (which
Haller called _odor aphrodisiacus_), which last odor is also found, as
Cloquet pointed out, in the flowers of the common berberry (_Berberis
vulgaris_) and in the chestnut. A very remarkable and significant example
of the same odor seems to occur in the case of the flowers of the henna
plant, the white-flowered Lawsonia (_Lawsonia inermis_), so widely used in
some Mohammedan lands for dyeing the nails and other parts of the body.
"These flowers diffuse the sweetest odor," wrote Sonnini in Egypt a
century ago; "the women delight to wear them, to adorn their houses with
them, to carry them to the baths, to hold them in their hands, and to
perfume their bosoms with them. They cannot patiently endure that
Christian and Jewish women shall share the privilege with them. It is very
remarkable that the perfume of the henna flowers, when closely inhaled, is
almost entirely lost in a very decided spermatic odor.
If the flowers are
crushed between the fingers this odor prevails, and is, indeed, the only
one perceptible. It is not surprising that so delicious a flower has
furnished Oriental poetry with many charming traits and amorous similes."
Such a simile Sonnini finds in the _Song of Songs_, i.
13-14.[78]
The odor of semen has not been investigated, but, according to
Zwaardemaker, artificially produced odors (like cadaverin) resemble it.
The odor of the leguminous fenugreek, a botanical friend considers,
closely approaches the odor given off in some cases by the armpit in
women. It is noteworthy that fenugreek contains cumarine, which imparts
its fragrance to new-mown hay and to various flowers of somewhat similar
odor. On some persons these have a sexually exciting effect, and it is of
considerable interest to observe that they recall to many the odor of
semen. "It seems very natural," a lady writes, "that flowers, etc., should
have an exciting effect, as the original and by far the pleasantest way of
love-making was in the open among flowers and fields; but a more purely
physical reason may, I think, be found in the exact resemblance between
the scent of semen and that of the pollen of flowering grasses. The first
time I became aware of this resemblance it came on me with a rush that
here was the explanation of the very exciting effect of a field of
flowering grasses and, perhaps through them, of the scents of other
flowers. If I am right, I suppose flower scents should affect women more
powerfully than men in a sexual way. I do not think anyone would be likely
to notice the odor of semen in this connection unless they had been
greatly struck by the exciting effects of the pollen of grasses. I had
often noticed it and puzzled over it." As pollen is the male sexual
element of flowers, its occasionally stimulating effect in this direction
is perhaps but an accidental result of a unity running through the organic
world, though it may be perhaps more simply explained as a special form of
that nasal irritation which is felt by so many persons in a hay-field.
Another correspondent, this time a man, tells me that he has noted the
resemblance of the odor of semen to that of crushed grasses. A scientific
friend who has done much work in the field of organic chemistry tells me
he associates the odor of semen with that produced by diastasic action on
mixing flour and water, which he regards as sexual in character. This
again brings us to the starchy products of the leguminous plants. It is
evident that, subtle and obscure as many questions in the physiology and
psychology of olfaction still remain, we cannot easily escape from their
sexual associations.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] H. Beauregard, _Matière Médicale Zoölogique: Histoire des Drogues
d'origine Animate_, 1901.
[54] Professor Plateau, of Ghent, has for many years carried on a series
of experiments which would even tend to show that insects are scarcely
attracted by the colors of flowers at all, but mainly influenced by a
sense which would appear to be smell. His experiments have been recorded
during recent years (from 1887) in the _Bulletins de l'Académie Royale de
Belgique_, and have from time to time been summarized in _Nature_, e.g.,
February 5, 1903.
[55] David Sharp, _Cambridge Natural History: Insects_, Part II, p. 398.
[56] Mantegazza, _Fisiologia dell' Amore_, 1873, p. 176.
[57] Mantegazza (_L'Amour dans l'Humanité_, p. 94) refers to various
peoples who practice this last custom. Egypt was a great centre of the
practice more than 3000 years ago.
[58] Hagen, _Sexuelle Osphrésiologie_, 1901, p. 226. It has been suggested
to me by a medical correspondent that one of the primitive objects of the
hair, alike on head, mons veneris, and axilla, was to collect sweat and
heighten its odor to sexual ends.
[59] The names of all our chief perfumes are Arabic or Persian: civet,
musk, ambergris, attar, camphor, etc.
[60] Cloquet (_Osphrésiologie_, pp. 73-76) has an interesting passage on
the prevalence of the musk odor in animals, plants, and even mineral
substances.
[61] Laycock brings together various instances of the sexual odors of
animals, insisting on their musky character (_Nervous Diseases of Women_;
section, "Odors"). See also a section in the _Descent of Man_ (Part II,
Chapter XVIII), in which Darwin argues that "the most odoriferous males
are the most successful in winning the females." Distant also has an
interesting paper on this subject, "Biological Suggestions," _Zoölogist_,
May, 1902; he points out the significant fact that musky odors are usually
confined to the male, and argues that animal odors generally are more
often attractive than protective.
[62] R. Whytt, _Works_, 1768, p. 543.
[63] Lucretius, VI, 790-5.
[64] Mohammed, said Ayesha, was very fond of perfumes, especially "men's
scents," musk and ambergris. He used also to burn camphor on odoriferous
wood and enjoy the fragrant smell, while he never refused perfumes when
offered them as a present. The things he cared for most, said Ayesha, were
women, scents, and foods. Muir, _Life of Mahomet_, vol.
iii, p. 297.
[65] H. ten Kate, _International Centralblatt für Anthropologie_, Ht. 6,
1902. This author, who made observations on Japanese with Zwaardemaker's
olfactometer, found that, contrary to an opinion sometimes stated, they
have a somewhat defective sense of smell. He remarks that there are no
really native Japanese perfumes.
[66] Moll: _Die Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third edition, 1890, p. 306.
[67] Moll: _Libido Sexualis_, bd. 1, p. 284.
[68] P. Näcke, "Un Cas de Fetichisme de Souliers,"
_Bulletin de la Société
de Médecine Mentale de Belgique_, 1894.
[69] _Psychopathia Sexualis_, English edition, p. 167.
[70] Philip Salmuth (_Observationes Medicæ_, Centuria II, no. 63) in the
seventeenth century recorded a case in which a young girl of noble birth
(whose sister was fond of eating chalk, cinnamon, and cloves) experienced
extreme pleasure in smelling old books. It would appear, however, that in
this case the fascination lay not so much in the odor of the leather as in
the mouldy odor of worm-eaten books; "_fætore veterum liborum, a blattis
et tineis exesorum, situque prorsus corruptorum_" are Salmuth's words.
[71] _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. iii,
"Appendix B, History
VIII."
[72] _Sexuelle Osphrésiologie_, p. 106.
[73] Mantegazza, _Fisiologia dell' Amore_, p. 176.
[74] In this connection I may quote the remark of the writer of a
thoughtful article in the _Journal of Psychological Medicine_, 1851: "The
use of scents, especially those allied to the musky, is one of the
luxuries of women, and in some constitutions cannot be indulged without
some danger to the morals, by the excitement to the ovaria which results.
And although less potent as aphrodisiacs in their action on the sexual
system of women than of men, we have reason to think that they cannot be
used to excess with impunity by most."
[75] _Kama Sutra_ of Vatsyayana, 1883, p. 5.
[76] Cloquet, _Osphrésiologie_, p. 95.
[77] In Normandy the _Chenopodium_, it is said, is called "conio," and in
Italy erba connina (con, cunnus), on account of its vulvar odor. The
attraction of dogs to this plant has been noted. In the same way cats are
irresistibly attracted to preparations of valerian because their own urine
contains valerianic acid.
[78] Sonnini, _Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte_, 1799, vol. i. p.
298.
V.
The Evil Effects of Excessive Olfactory Stimulation--The Symptoms of
Vanillism--The Occasional Dangerous Results of the Odors of
Flowers--Effects of Flowers on the Voice.
The reality of the olfactory influences with which we have been concerned,
however slight they may sometimes appear, is shown by the fact that odors,
both agreeable and disagreeable, are stimulants, obeying the laws which
hold good for stimulants generally. They whip up the nervous energies
momentarily, but in the end, if the excitation is excessive and prolonged,
they produce fatigue and exhaustion. This is clearly shown by Féré's
elaborate experiments on the influences of odors, as compared with other
sensory stimulants, on the amount of muscular work performed with the
ergograph.[79] Commenting on the remark of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, that
"man uses perfumes to impart energy to his passion,"
Féré remarks: "But
perfumes cannot keep up the fires which they light."
Their prolonged use
involves fatigue, which is not different from that produced by excessive
work, and reproduces all the bodily and psychic accompaniments of
excessive work.[80] It is well known that workers in perfumes are apt to
suffer from the inhalation of the odors amid which they live. Dealers in
musk are said to be specially liable to precocious dementia. The symptoms
generally experienced by the men and women who work in vanilla factories
where the crude fruit is prepared for commerce have often been studied and
are well known. They are due to the inhalation of the scent, which has all
the properties of the aromatic aldehydes, and include skin eruptions,[81]
general excitement, sleeplessness, headache, excessive menstruation, and
irritable bladder. There is nearly always sexual excitement, which may be
very pronounced.[82]
We are here in the presence, it may be insisted, not of a nervous
influence only, but of a direct effect of odor on the vital processes. The
experiments of Tardif on the influence of perfumes on frogs and rabbits
showed that a poisonous effect was exerted;[83] while Féré, by incubating
fowls' eggs in the presence of musk, found repeatedly that many
abnormalities occurred, and that development was retarded even in the
embryos that remained normal; while he obtained somewhat similar results
by using essences of lavender, cloves, etc.[84] The influence of odors is
thus deeper than is indicated by their nervous effects; they act directly
on nutrition. We are led, as Passy remarks, to regard odors as very
intimately related to the physiological properties of organic substances,
and the sense of smell as a detached fragment of generally sensibility,
reacting to the same stimuli as general sensibility, but highly
specialized in view of its protective function.
The reality and subtlety of the influence of odors is further
shown, by the cases in which very intense effects are produced
even by the temporary inhalation of flowers or perfumes or other
odors. Such cases of idiosyncrasy in which a person-
-frequently
of somewhat neurotic temperament--becomes acutely sensitive to
some odor or odors have been recorded in medical literature for
many centuries. In these cases the obnoxious odor produces
congestion of the respiratory passages, sneezing, headache,
fainting, etc., but occasionally, it has been recorded, even
death. (Dr. J.N. Mackenzie, in his interesting and learned paper
on "The Production of the so-called 'Rose Cold,'
etc.," _American
Journal of Medical Sciences_, January, 1886, quotes many cases,
and gives a number of references to ancient medical authors; see
also Layet, art. "Odeur," _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des
Sciences Médicales_.)
An interesting phenomenon of the group--though it is almost too
common to be described as an idiosyncrasy--is the tendency of the
odor of certain flowers to affect the voice and sometimes even to
produce complete loss of voice. The mechanism of the process is
not fully understood, but it would appear that congestion and
paresis of the larynx is produced and spasm of the bronchial
tube. Botallus in 1565 recorded cases in which the scent of
flowers brought on difficulty of breathing, and the danger of
flowers from this point of view is well recognized by
professional singers. Joal has studied this question in an
elaborate paper (summarized in the _British Medical Journal_,
March 3, 1895), and Dr. Cabanès has brought together (_Figaro_,
January 20, 1894) the experiences of a number of well-known
singers, teachers of singing, and laryngologists.
Thus, Madame
Renée Richard, of the Paris Opera, has frequently found that when
her pupils have arrived with a bunch of violets fastened to the
bodice or even with a violet and iris sachet beneath the corset,
the voice has been