Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iv Part 7

There is, however, no doubt that the smell of leather has a curiously stimulating s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual influence is owing, for, as we have already seen, there is a tendency for s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual fetichistic perversions, is greatly favored, if, indeed, it does not owe its origin to, the a.s.sociated 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] Nacke has also recorded the case of a shoe fetichist who declared that the s.e.xual 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 prost.i.tutes that such a device is not infrequent. Nacke mentions that a colleague of his was informed by a prost.i.tute 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual and other respects, who is conscious of a considerable degree of pleasurable s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual excitement was produced by the contact with the stool (in a way that is not infrequent in young girls) and that the accidentally a.s.sociated 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 ill.u.s.trated by this case, and this is likewise suggested by the fact that the same subject is also s.e.xually 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual organs that the expression of pleasure produced by olfaction resembles the expression of s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual, 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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. Sh.e.l.ley's description of the lily of the valley, 'whom youth makes so fair and pa.s.sion 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 s.e.xual effects. To some people lilies have an odor which they describe as s.e.xual, although these persons may be quite unaware that Hindu authors long since described the v.u.l.v.ar 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 s.e.xual field, and that their s.e.xual 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 s.e.xual odors. A rare garden weed, the stinking goosefoot, Chenopodium v.u.l.v.aria, 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 (Crataegus oxyacantha) and many others of the Rosaceae-which recalls the odor of the animal and human s.e.xual regions.[77] The reason is that both plant and animal odors belong chemically to the same group of capryl odors (Linnaeus's Odores hircini), so called from the goat, the most important group of odors from the s.e.xual 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 (Hyperic.u.m hircinum), as well as the Chenopodium. Zwaardemaker considers it probable that the odor of the v.a.g.i.n.a belongs to the same group, as well as the odor of s.e.m.e.n (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 s.e.m.e.n 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 c.u.marine, which imparts its fragrance to new-mown hay and to various flowers of somewhat similar odor. On some persons these have a s.e.xually exciting effect, and it is of considerable interest to observe that they recall to many the odor of s.e.m.e.n. "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 s.e.m.e.n and that of the pollen of flowering gra.s.ses. 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 gra.s.ses 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 s.e.xual way. I do not think anyone would be likely to notice the odor of s.e.m.e.n in this connection unless they had been greatly struck by the exciting effects of the pollen of gra.s.ses. I had often noticed it and puzzled over it." As pollen is the male s.e.xual 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 s.e.m.e.n to that of crushed gra.s.ses. A scientific friend who has done much work in the field of organic chemistry tells me he a.s.sociates the odor of s.e.m.e.n with that produced by diastasic action on mixing flour and water, which he regards as s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual a.s.sociations.

[53]

H. Beauregard, Matiere Medicale Zoologique: 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'Academie 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'Humanite, 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, s.e.xuelle Osphresiologie, 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 s.e.xual ends.

[59]

The names of all our chief perfumes are Arabic or Persian: civet, musk, ambergris, attar, camphor, etc.

[60]

Cloquet (Osphresiologie, pp. 73-76) has an interesting pa.s.sage on the prevalence of the musk odor in animals, plants, and even mineral substances.

[61]

Layc.o.c.k brings together various instances of the s.e.xual 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," Zoologist, 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 fur Anthropologie, Ht. 6, 1902. This author, who made observations on j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese perfumes.

[66]

Moll: Die Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, third edition, 1890, p. 306.

[67]

Moll: Libido s.e.xualis, bd. 1, p. 284.

[68]

P. Nacke, "Un Cas de Fetichisme de Souliers," Bulletin de la Societe de Medecine Mentale de Belgique, 1894.

[69]

Psychopathia s.e.xualis, English edition, p. 167.

[70]

Philip Salmuth (Observationes Medicae, Centuria II, no. 63) in the seventeenth century recorded a case in which a young girl of n.o.ble 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; "faetore veterum liborum, a blattis et tineis exesorum, situque prorsus corruptorum" are Salmuth's words.

[71]

Studies in the Psychology of s.e.x, vol. iii, "Appendix B, History VIII."

[72]

s.e.xuelle Osphresiologie, 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 const.i.tutions 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 s.e.xual 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, Osphresiologie, p. 95.

[77]

In Normandy the Chenopodium, it is said, is called "conio," and in Italy erba connina (con, cunnus), on account of its v.u.l.v.ar 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 Ba.s.se 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 Fere'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 pa.s.sion," Fere 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 s.e.xual excitement, which may be very p.r.o.nounced.[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 Fere, by incubating fowls' eggs in the presence of musk, found repeatedly that many abnormalities occurred, and that development was r.e.t.a.r.ded 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 Pa.s.sy 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.