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 antisexual 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 sexual sphere and the nose,
that the olfactory organ needs to have its sensibility modified in a form
receptive to sexual messages, though such an assumption 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 analyze the cases in which olfactory
perceptions have proved potent in love, we shall nearly always find that
they have been experienced under circumstances 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 sexual 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 sexual 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) sexual 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 sexual attraction in civilized men. It is a primitive
sense which had its flowering time before men arose; it is a comparatively
unæsthetic 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 sexual
instinct than the antisexual 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 sexually attracted, while
their attitude is neutral in this respect toward the individuals to whom
they are sexually 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 associations 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 associate this with my marked sexual proclivities. I like
a woman to use a little scent. It rouses my sexual feelings, but not to
any large extent. I dislike the smell of a woman's vagina." 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 vulvar 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 sexually influenced in this way cannot thus be
decided. Among animals, it seems probable, both sexes are alike influenced
by odors, for, while it is usually the male whose sexual regions are
furnished with special scent glands, when such occur, the peculiar odor of
the female during the sexual 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 sexual
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 puberty--which is of considerable interest from the point
of view of the sexual significance of olfaction--he has shown reason to
believe that girls acquire an increased susceptibility to odors when
sexual 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
sexual 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 _Chérie_--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 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
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 the
_cigarreras_ are 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
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 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 any specific 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 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
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 these
_Studies_, 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 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
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 phydikê chrôtos (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 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 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 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 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."


FOOTNOTES:

[30] R. Andree, "Völkergeruch," in _Ethnographische Parallelen_, Neue
Folge, 1889, pp. 213-222, brings together many passages describing the
odors of various peoples. Hagen, _Sexuelle Osphrésiologie_, pp. 166 et
seq., has a chapter on the subject; Joest, supplement to _International
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. 137 et 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. 82 et 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.




IV.

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 male _Moschus moschiferus_ which
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 bears witness 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 much smaller 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.

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 entitled
_The Perfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaoui_ that 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 of _Esther_ has 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 the _Arabian Nights_ there 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 scenting
himself 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 of _Odores 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, and among Europeans a musky odor is said to be
characteristic of blondes. Laycock, in his _Nervous 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 amenorrhoea. 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
in _El 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 the
_Perfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaoui_ it 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 the _Art
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 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