Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iv Part 5

Of the Padmini, the perfect woman, the "lotus woman," Hindu writers say that "her sweat has the odor of musk," while the vulgar woman, they say, smells of fish (Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana). Ploss and Bartels (Das Weib, 1901, p. 218) bring forward a pa.s.sage from the Tamil Kokkogam, minutely describing various kinds of s.e.xual odor in women, which they regard as resting on sound observation.

Four things in a woman, says the Arab, should be perfumed: the mouth, the armpits, the pudenda, and the nose. The Persian poets, in describing the body, delighted to use metaphors involving odor. Not only the hair and the down on the face, but the chin, the mouth, the beauty spots, the neck, all suggested odorous images. The epithets applied to the hair frequently refer to musk, ambergris, and civet. (Anis El-Ochchaq translated by Huart, Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, fasc. 25, 1875.)

The Hebrew Song of Songs furnishes a typical example of a very beautiful Eastern love-poem in which the importance of the appeal to the sense of smell is throughout emphasized. There are in this short poem as many as twenty-four fairly definite references to odors,-personal odors, perfumes, and flowers,-while numerous other references to flowers, etc., seem to point to olfactory a.s.sociations. Both the lover and his sweetheart express pleasure in each other's personal odor.

"My beloved is unto me," she sings, "as a bag of myrrh That lieth between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s; My beloved is unto me as a cl.u.s.ter of henna flowers In the vineyard of En-gedi."

And again: "His cheeks are as a bed of spices [or balsam], as banks of sweet herbs." While of her he says: "The smell of thy breath [or nose] is like apples."

Greek and Roman antiquity, which has so largely influenced the traditions of modern Europe, was lavish in the use of perfumes, but showed no sympathy with personal odors. For the Roman satirists, like Martial, a personal odor is nearly always an unpleasant odor, though, there are a few allusions in cla.s.sic literature recognizing bodily smell as a s.e.xual attraction. Ovid, in his Ars Amandi (Book III), says it is scarcely necessary to remind a lady that she must not keep a goat in her armpits: "ne trux caper iret in alas." "Mulier tum bene olet ubi nihil olet" is an ancient dictum, and in the sixteenth century Montaigne still repeated the same saying with complete approval.

A different current of feeling began to appear with the new emotional movement during the eighteenth century. Rousseau called attention to the importance of the olfactory sense, and in his educational work, Emile (Bk. II), he referred to the odor of a woman's "cabinet de toilette" as not so feeble a snare as is commonly supposed. In the same century Casanova wrote still more emphatically concerning the same point; in the preface to his Memoires he states: "I have always found sweet the odor of the women I have loved"; and elsewhere: "There is something in the air of the bedroom of the woman one loves, something so intimate, so balsamic, such voluptuous emanations, that if a lover had to choose between Heaven and this place of delight his hesitation would not last for a moment" (Memoires, vol. iii). In the previous century, in England, Sir Kenelm Digby, in his interesting and remarkable Private Memoirs, when describing a visit to Lady Venetia Stanley, afterward his wife, touches on personal odor as an element of attraction; he had found her asleep in bed and on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s "did glisten a few drops of sweatlike diamond sparks, and had a more fragrant odor than the violets or primroses whose season was newly pa.s.sed."

In 1821 Cadet-Devaux published, in the Revue Encyclopedique, a study ent.i.tled "De l'atmosphere de la Femme et de sa Puissance," which attracted a great deal of attention in Germany as well as in France; he considered that the exhalations of the feminine body are of the first importance in s.e.xual attraction.

Prof. A. Galopin in 1886 wrote a semiscientific book, Le Parfum de la Femme, in which the s.e.xual significance of personal odor is developed to its fullest. He writes with enthusiasm concerning the sweet and health-giving character of the natural perfume of a beloved woman, and the mischief done both to health and love by the use of artificial perfumes. "The purest marriage that can be contracted between a man and a woman," he a.s.serts (p. 157) "is that engendered by olfaction and sanctioned by a common a.s.similation in the brain of the animated molecules due to the secretion and evaporation of two bodies in contact and sympathy."

In a book written during the first half of the nineteenth century which contains various subtle observations on love we read, with reference to the sweet odor which poets have found in the breath of women: "In reality many women have an intoxicatingly agreeable breath which plays no small part in the love-compelling atmosphere which they spread around them" (Eros oder Worterbuch uber die Physiologie, 1849, Bd. 1, p. 45).

Most of the writers on the psychology of love at this period, however, seem to have pa.s.sed over the olfactory element in s.e.xual attraction, regarding it probably as too unaesthetic. It receives no emphasis either in Senancour's De l'Amour or Stendhal's De l'Amour or Michelet's L'Amour.

The poets within recent times have frequently referred to odors, personal and other, but the novelists have more rarely done so. Zola and Huysmans, the two novelists who have most elaborately and insistently developed the olfactory side of life, have dwelt more on odors that are repulsive than on those that are agreeable. It is therefore of interest to note that in a few remarkable novels of recent times the attractiveness of personal odor has been emphasized. This is notably so in Tolstoy's War and Peace, in which Count Peter suddenly resolves to marry Princess Helena after inhaling her odor at a ball. In d'Annunzio's Trionfo della Morte the seductive and consoling odor of the beloved woman's skin is described in several pa.s.sages; thus, when Giorgio kissed Ippolita's arms and shoulders, we are told, "he perceived the sharp and yet delicate perfume of her, the perfume of the skin that in the hour of joy became intoxicating as that of the tuberose, and a terrible lash to desire."

When we are dealing with the s.e.xual significance of personal odors in man there is at the outset an important difference to be noticed in comparison with the lower mammals. Not only is the significance of odor altogether very much less, but the focus of olfactory attractiveness has been displaced. The centre of olfactory attractiveness is not, as usually among animals, in the s.e.xual region, but is transferred to the upper part of the body. In this respect the s.e.xual olfactory allurement in man resembles what we find in the sphere of vision, for neither the s.e.xual organs of man nor of woman are usually beautiful in the eyes of the opposite s.e.x, and their exhibition is not among us regarded as a necessary stage in courts.h.i.+p. The odor of the body, like its beauty, in so far as it can be regarded as a possible s.e.xual allurement, has in the course of development been transferred to the upper parts. The careful concealment of the s.e.xual region has doubtless favored this transfer. It has thus happened that when personal odor acts as a s.e.xual allurement it is the armpit, in any case normally the chief focus of odor in the body, which mainly comes into play, together with the skin and the hair.

Aubert, of Lyons, noted that during menstruation the odor of the armpits may become more powerful, and describes it as being at this time an aromatic odor of acidulous or chloroform character. Galopin remarks that, while some women's armpits smell of sheep in rut, others, when exposed to the air, have a fragrance of ambergris or violet. Dark persons (according to Gould and Pyle) are said sometimes to exhale a prussic acid odor, and blondes more frequently musk; Galopin a.s.sociates the ambergris odor more especially with blondes.

While some European poets have faintly indicated the woman's armpit as a centre of s.e.xual attraction, it is among Eastern poets that we may find the idea more directly and naturally expressed. Thus, in a Chinese drama ("The Transmigration of Yo-Chow," Mercure de France, No. 8, 1901) we find a learned young doctor addressing the following poem to his betrothed:-

"When I have climbed to the bushy summit of Mount Chao, I have still not reached to the level of your odorous armpit.

I must needs mount to the sky Before the breeze brings to me The perfume of that embalsamed nest!"

This poet seems, however, to have been carried to a pitch of enthusiasm unusual even in China, for his future mother-in-law, after expressing her admiration for the poem, remarks: "But who would have thought one could find so many beautiful things under my daughter's armpit!"

The odor of the armpit is the most powerful in the body, sufficiently powerful to act as a muscular stimulant even in the absence of any direct s.e.xual a.s.sociation. This is indicated by an observation made by Fere, who noticed, when living opposite a laundry, that an old woman who worked near the window would, toward the close of the day, introduce her right hand under the sleeve of the other to the armpit and then hold it to her nose; this she would do about every five minutes. It was evident that the odor acted as a stimulant to her failing energies. Fere has been informed by others who have had occasion to frequent workrooms that this proceeding is by no means uncommon among persons of both s.e.xes. (Fere, L'Instinct s.e.xuel, second edition, p. 135.) I have myself noticed the same gesture very deliberately made in the street by a young English woman of the working cla.s.s, under circ.u.mstances which suggested that it acted as an immediate stimulant in fatigue.

Huysmans-who in his novels has insisted on odors, both those of a personal kind and perfumes, with great precision-has devoted one of the sketches, "Le Gousset," in his Croquis Parisiens (1880) to the varying odors of women's armpits. "I have followed this fragrance in the country," he remarks, "behind a group of women gleaners under the bright sun. It was excessive and terrible; it stung your nostrils like an unstoppered bottle of alkali; it seized you, irritating your mucous membrane with a rough odor which had in it something of the relish of wild duck cooked with olives and the sharp odor of the shallot. On the whole, it was not a vile or repugnant emanation; it united, as an antic.i.p.ated thing, with the formidable odors of the landscape; it was the pure note, completing with the human animals' cry of heat the odorous melody of beasts and woods." He goes on to speak of the perfume of feminine arms in the ball-room. "There the aroma is of ammoniated valerian, of chlorinated urine, brutally accentuated sometimes, even with a slight scent of prussic acid about it, a faint whiff of overripe peaches." These "spice-boxes," however, Huysmans continues, are more seductive when their perfume is filtered through the garments. "The appeal of the balsam of their arms is then less insolent, less cynical, than at the ball where they are more naked, but it more easily uncages the animal in man. Various as the color of the hair, the odor of the armpit is infinitely divisible; its gamut covers the whole keyboard of odors, reaching the obstinate scents of syringa and elder, and sometimes recalling the sweet perfume of the rubbed fingers that have held a cigarette. Audacious and sometimes fatiguing in the brunette and the black woman, sharp and fierce in the red woman, the armpit is heady as some sugared wines in the blondes." It will be noted that this very exact description corresponds at various points with the remarks of more scientific observers.

Sometimes the odor of the armpit may even become a kind of fetich which is craved for its own sake and in itself suffices to give pleasure. Fere has recorded such a case, in a friend of his own, a man of 60, with whom at one time he used to hunt, of robust health and belonging to a healthy family. On these hunting expeditions he used to tease the girls and women he met (sometimes even rather old women) in a surprising manner, when he came upon them walking in the fields with their short-sleeved chemises exposed. When he had succeeded in introducing his hand into the woman's armpit he went away satisfied, and frequently held the hand to his nose with evident pleasure. After long hesitation Fere asked for an explanation, which was frankly given. As a child he had liked the odor, without knowing why. As a young man women with strong odors had stimulated him to extraordinary s.e.xual exploits, and now they were the only women who had any influence on him. He professed to be able to recognize continence by the odor, as well as the most favorable moment for approaching a woman. Throughout life a cold in the head had always been accompanied by persistent general excitement. (Fere, L'Instinct s.e.xuel, 1902, p. 134.)

We not only have to recognize that in the course of evolution the specific odors of the s.e.xual region have sunk into the background as a source of s.e.xual allurements, we have further to recognize the significant fact that even those personal odors which are chiefly liable under normal circ.u.mstances to come occasionally within the conscious s.e.xual sphere, and indeed purely personal odors of all kinds, fail to exert any attraction, but rather tend to cause antipathy, unless some degree of tumescence has already been attained. That is to say, our olfactory experiences of the human body approximate rather to our tactile experiences of it than to our visual experiences. Sight is our most intellectual sense, and we trust ourselves to it with comparative boldness without any undue dread that its messages will hurt us by their personal intimacy; we even court its experiences, for it is the chief organ of our curiosity, as smell is of a dog's. But smell with us has ceased to be a leading channel of intellectual curiosity. Personal odors do not, as vision does, give us information that is very largely intellectual; they make an appeal that is mainly of an intimate, emotional, imaginative character. They thus tend, when we are in our normal condition, to arouse what James calls the antis.e.xual instinct.

"I cannot understand how people do not see how the senses are connected," said Jenny Lind to J. A. Symonds (Horatio Brown, J. A. Symonds, vol. i, p. 207). "What I have suffered from my sense of smell! My youth was misery from my acuteness of sensibility."

Mantegazza discusses the strength of olfactory antipathies (Fisiologia dell' Odio, p. 101), and mentions that once when ill in Paraguay he was nursed by an Indian girl of 16, who was fresh as a peach and extremely clean, but whose odor-"a mixture of wild beast's lair and decayed onions"-caused nausea and almost made him faint.

Moll (Untersuchungen uber die Libido s.e.xualis, bd. i, p. 135) records the case of a neuropathic man who was constantly rendered impotent by his antipathy to personal body odors. It had very frequently happened to him to be attracted by the face and appearance of a girl, but at the last moment potency was inhibited by the perception of personal odor.

In the case of a man of distinguished ability known to me, belonging to a somewhat neuropathic family, there is extreme sensitiveness to the smell of a woman, which is frequently the most obvious thing to him about her. He has seldom known a woman whose natural perfume entirely suits him, and his olfactory impressions have frequently been the immediate cause of a rupture of relations.h.i.+ps.

It was formerly discussed whether strong personal odor const.i.tuted adequate ground for divorce. Hagen, who brings forward references on this point (s.e.xuelle Osphresiologie, pp. 75-83), considers that the body odors are normally and naturally repulsive because they are closely a.s.sociated with the capryl group of odors, which are those of many of the excretions.

Olfactory antipathies are, however, often strictly subordinated to the individual's general emotional att.i.tude toward the object from which they emanate. This is ill.u.s.trated in the case, known to me, of a man who on a hot day entering a steamboat with a woman to whom he was attached seated himself between her and a man, a stranger. He soon became conscious of an axillary odor which he concluded to come from the man and which he felt as disagreeable. But a little later he realized that it proceeded from his own companion, and with this discovery the odor at once lost its disagreeable character.

In this respect a personal odor resembles a personal touch. Two intimate touches of the hand, though of precisely similar physical quality, may in their emotional effects be separated by an immeasurable interval, in dependence on our att.i.tude toward the person from whom they proceed.

Personal odor, in order to make its allurement felt, and not to arouse antipathy, must, in normal persons, have been preceded by conditions which have inhibited the play of the antis.e.xual instinct. A certain degree of tumescence must already have been attained. It is even possible, when we bear in mind the intimate sympathy between the s.e.xual sphere and the nose, that the olfactory organ needs to have its sensibility modified in a form receptive to s.e.xual messages, though such an a.s.sumption is by no means necessary. It is when such a faint preliminary degree of tumescence has been attained, however it may have been attained,-for the methods of tumescence, as we know, are innumerable,-that a sympathetic personal odor is enabled to make its appeal. If we a.n.a.lyze the cases in which olfactory perceptions have proved potent in love, we shall nearly always find that they have been experienced under circ.u.mstances favorable for the occurrence of tumescence. When this is not the case we may reasonably suspect the presence of some degree of perversion.

In the oft-quoted case of the Austrian peasant who found that he was aided in seducing young women by dancing with them and then wiping their faces with a handkerchief he had kept in his armpit, we may doubtless regard the preliminary excitement of the dance as an essential factor in the influence produced.

In the same way, I am acquainted with the ease of a lady not usually sensitive to simple body odors (though affected by perfumes and flowers) who on one occasion, when already in a state of s.e.xual erethism, was highly excited when perceiving the odor of her lover's axilla.

The same influence of preliminary excitement may be seen in another instance known to me, that of a gentlemen who when traveling abroad fell in with three charming young ladies during a long railway journey. He was conscious of a pleasurable excitement caused by the prolonged intimacy of the journey, but this only became definitely s.e.xual when the youngest of the ladies, stretching before him to look out of the window and holding on to the rack above, accidentally brought her axilla into close proximity with his face, whereupon erection was caused, although he himself regards personal odors, at all events when emanating from strangers, as indifferent or repulsive.

A medical correspondent, referring to the fact that with many men (indeed women also) s.e.xual excitement occurs after dancing for a considerable time, remarks that he considers the odor of the woman's sweat is here a considerable factor.

The characteristics of olfaction which our investigation has so far revealed have not, on the whole, been favorable to the influence of personal odors as a s.e.xual attraction in civilized men. It is a primitive sense which had its flowering time before men arose; it is a comparatively unaesthetic sense; it is a somewhat obtuse sense which among Europeans is usually incapable of perceiving the odor of the "human flower"-to use Goethe's phrase-except on very close contact, and on this account, and on account of the fact that it is a predominantly emotional sense, personal odors in ordinary social intercourse are less likely to arouse the s.e.xual instinct than the antis.e.xual instinct. If a certain degree of tumescence is required before a personal odor can exert an attractive influence, a powerful personal odor, strong enough to be perceived before any degree of tumescence is attained, will tend to cause repulsion, and in so doing tend, consciously or unconsciously, to excite prejudice against personal odor altogether. This is actually the case in civilization, and most people, it would appear, view with more or less antipathy the personal odors of those persons to whom they are not s.e.xually attracted, while their att.i.tude is neutral in this respect toward the individuals to whom they are s.e.xually attracted.[51] The following statement by a correspondent seems to me to express the experience of the majority of men in this respect: "I do not notice that different people have different smells. Certain women I have known have been in the habit of using particular scents, but no a.s.sociations could be aroused if I were to smell the same scent now, for I should not identify it. As a boy I was very fond of scent, and I a.s.sociate this with my marked s.e.xual proclivities. I like a woman to use a little scent. It rouses my s.e.xual feelings, but not to any large extent. I dislike the smell of a woman's v.a.g.i.n.a." While the last statement seems to express the feeling of many if not most men, it may be proper to add that there seems no natural reason why the v.u.l.v.ar odor of a clean and healthy woman should be other than agreeable to a normal man who is her lover.

In literature it is the natural odor of women rather than men which receives attention. We should expect this to be the case since literature is chiefly produced by men. The question as to whether men or women are really more apt to be s.e.xually influenced in this way cannot thus be decided. Among animals, it seems probable, both s.e.xes are alike influenced by odors, for, while it is usually the male whose s.e.xual regions are furnished with special scent glands, when such occur, the peculiar odor of the female during the s.e.xual season is certainly not less efficacious as an allurement to the male. If we compare the general susceptibility of men and women to agreeable odors, apart from the question of s.e.xual allurement, there can be little doubt that it is most marked among women. As Groos points out, even among children little girls are more interested in scents than boys, and the investigations of various workers, especially Garbini, have shown that there is actually a greater power of discriminating odors among girls than among boys. Marro has gone further, and in an extended series of observations on girls before and after the establishment of p.u.b.erty-which is of considerable interest from the point of view of the s.e.xual significance of olfaction-he has shown reason to believe that girls acquire an increased susceptibility to odors when s.e.xual life begins, although they show no such increased powers as regards the other senses.[52] On the whole, it would appear that, while women are not apt to be seriously affected, in the absence of any preliminary excitation, by crude body odors, they are by no means insusceptible to the s.e.xual influence of olfactory impressions. It is probable, indeed, that they are more affected, and more frequently affected, in this way, than are men.

Edouard de Goncourt, in his novel Cherie-the intimate history of a young girl, founded, he states, on much personal observation-describes (Chapter Lx.x.xV) 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 reading Paul et Virginie and 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 in Man 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 s.e.xual instinct, throughout a.s.sumes, 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 the cigarreras are women and girls who live perpetually in an atmosphere of tobacco, and Senora 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 the cigarreras is 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 pa.s.sed 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 any specific bodily s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 healthy naked human 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 is very faint. 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 a.s.sociation 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 s.e.xual histories are recorded in Appendix B of vol. iii of these Studies, all are liable to experience s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual fascination which odor, a.s.sociated with the men they love, exerts on women has easily pa.s.sed unperceived, since women have not felt called upon to proclaim it. In s.e.xual 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual tendencies, was apt to experience s.e.xual emotions when in ordinary contact with schoolfellows whose body odor was marked (Fere, L'Instinct s.e.xuel, p. 260). Such examples are fairly typical.

That the body odor of men may in a large number of cases be highly agreeable and s.e.xually attractive is shown by the testimony of male s.e.xual inverts. There is abundant evidence to this effect. Raffalovich (L'Uranisme et l'Unis.e.xualite, p. 126) insists on the importance of body odors as a s.e.xual attraction to the male invert, and is inclined to think that the increased odor of the man's own body during s.e.xual 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 pa.s.sage 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 old fascia, 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 my panoia.' '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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es 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 f?d??? ???t?? (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 the Lord hath blessed.' Their bodies and their clothes exhale an indefinable fragrance of purity and s.e.x combined. Every gland of the robust frame seems to have acc.u.mulated scent from herbs and gra.s.ses, 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sage in the second part of Faust Goethe (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 pa.s.sage 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 heat Smells like an Alexander's sweat.

Their females fragrant as the mead Which they in fairy circles tread, When at their dance's end they kiss, Their new-mown hay not sweeter is."

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R. Andree, "Volkergeruch," in Ethnographische Parallelen, Neue Folge, 1889, pp. 213-222, brings together many pa.s.sages describing the odors of various peoples. Hagen, s.e.xuelle Osphresiologie, pp. 166 et seq., has a chapter on the subject; Joest, supplement to International Archiv fur Ethnographie, 1893, p. 53, has an interesting pa.s.sage 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 Inst.i.tute, 1889, p. 391; Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. i, p. 7; d'Orbigny, L'Homme Americain, vol. i, p. 87, etc.

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

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