Plays,” Vol. V., p. 179, 1825.)
And Montaigne may be alluding to it when he says:
“Physicians might (in my opinion) draw more use and good from odours
than they do. For myself have often perceived, that according unto
their strength and qualitie, _they change and alter, and move my
spirit, and worke strange effects in me_: Which makes me approve the
common saying, that invention of incense and perfumes in Churches,
so ancient and so far-dispersed throughout all nations and
religions, had an especiall regard to rejoyce, to comfort, to
quicken and to rowze and to purifie our senses, ...”
The Jacobean herbalists and therapeutists in general, as we shall see
later on, frequently credit aromatics with the power of strengthening
the memory. But, so far as my reading goes, I have failed to find a
clear and unmistakable description of this peculiar phenomenon in any
writer prior to the nineteenth century. It is, of course, difficult to
prove a negative, and so it would not be surprising if some such
allusion were to be dug up. But even then the wonder would remain that
it had attracted little, if any, attention from others. As a matter of
fact, mental happenings of this order did not interest our forebears
much. Shakespeare is the exception to this statement, and that is one of
his claims to greatness.
Moreover, quite apart from this particular, the writings of the old
English poets and of such French and German authors as I am acquainted
with, seem curiously deficient in references to all but the more gross
and obvious phenomena of olfaction, and these are most frequently of the
farcical order, a little too gross and obvious for modern readers.
Since Dickens’s time, however, we have had almost too much literary
odour.
I do not agree with the purists who deny to Dickens the glory of a great
writer of English prose. Dickens was an impressionist, perhaps the first
and certainly the greatest of this school, and as such he was a master.
Few equal and none surpass him in the rare vigour of scene, and
portrait-painting. And it is significant to find him using the aroma of
the place and also of the person to impart life and reality to his
description.
Take for example, to cite but one out of many olfactory references in
his books, the humorous analysis of the smells in various London
churches in “The Uncommercial Traveller.” One congregation furnishes “an
agreeable odour of pomatum,” while in the others “rat and mildew and
dead citizens” seemed to be the fundamentals, to which in some
localities was added “in a dreamy way not at all displeasing” the staple
character of the neighbourhood. “A dry whiff of wheat” circulated about
Mark Lane, and he “accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of
an aged hassock” in another. The reader’s throat begins at once to feel
dry.
Then note how Mr. E. W. B. Childers starts from the page the moment his
creator breathes into our nostrils a breath of his life:—“a smell of
lamp oil, straw, orange-peel, horses’ provender, and sawdust.”
I could fill this book with olfactory citations from Dickens alone. But
to come to contemporary writers, those of Rudyard Kipling are almost as
plentiful, the smell that brings places to the mind being a favourite
with him. But I have always wondered how it came about that the highly
sensitive nose of Mr. Kipling permitted Imray’s corpse on the rafters
above the ceiling-cloth to remain undiscovered for as long as three
months. This in India. The bungalow, we gather, was haunted. It would
be.
Nevertheless, in spite of the keen olfaction of both of those writers,
neither of them, as far as I can remember, weaves the memory-reviving
power of olfaction into a plot. We come across it, however, in foreign
literature, as in the suggestive play made with the smell of lamp-oil in
Dostoievsky’s “Crime and Punishment.”
The more recent English and foreign writers, however, give us a surfeit
of odours—as if to prove their superiority in this as in all else.
It seems strange, moreover, that the theatre should have overlooked this
avenue to the memory and imagination of its audiences. The ancient
Romans, to be sure, during the gladiatorial games, used to perfume the
atmosphere of the Colosseum, whether to counteract the raw smell of
dust, blood, and sweat, it were hard to say, as these rank odours play
their part, again subtly, in stimulating the slaughterous passions of
mankind.
But our modern theatre, which a prominent Scots ecclesiastic of the
nineteenth century characterised as redolent only of “orange-peel,
sawdust, and vice,” has not yet risen to anything higher than a
continuous discharge of incense during spectacular dramas depicting the
(theatrical) East.
Why not go further? Think how the appeal of a love-scene would be
strengthened by an invisible cloud of roses blown into the house through
the ventilating shafts! The villain would be heralded by an olfactory
_motif_ of a brimstony flavour mingled, if he was of the usual swarthy
countenance, with a _soupçon_ of garlic. The hero, well groomed and
clean-limbed, would waft a delicate suggestion of Brown Windsor to the
love-sick maidens in the dress-circle. The heavy father would radiate
snuff with his red pocket-handkerchief. The large-eyed foreign
adventuress would permeate the auditorium on wings of patchouli. The
dear broken-hearted old mother would disseminate that most respectable
of perfumes (for there is a caste-system among smells) eau de Cologne—a
scent that always evokes in my mind a darkened room, tiptoes, hushed
voices, raised forefingers, and Somebody in bed with a—headache.
And so on. Here is a new way of “putting it over.”
Critics will object that, as the influence of eau de Cologne on my own
mind shows, the particular odours so supplied would defeat their purpose
by calling up a thousand different and incongruous images in the
thousand minds of the audience. But such mischances could easily be
avoided by conventionalising the odours after the manner already
familiar in the stock gesticulations of our players, all of whom enter,
sit down, pull off their gloves, blow their noses, utter defiance, shed
tears, launch curses, make love, live, die, and are buried, according to
an inveterate, cast-iron ritual.
CHAPTER IV
SMELL AND SPEECH
That the effect of odour upon the mind is largely concealed is further
illustrated by the curious fact that our native language does not
possess a terminology descriptive of smells. We never name an odour; we
only say it has a “smell like” something or another. As a matter of
fact, the same remark was made regarding French by P. P. Poncelet as
long ago as 1755.
In this defect smell is unique among the senses. Even the sense that
governs equilibration, of which the consciousness in normal conditions
is never aware, has furnished us with “giddy” and “dizzy.”
Vision is represented by hundreds of words. We have, for instance, names
not only for the primary colours red, yellow, and blue, but also for
many of their combinations. (In these remarks we are not including the
modern names given to the many shades of the synthetic colours.)
If we take red as an example, we find scarlet, crimson, vermilion, and
pink. This colour, indeed, is ranked above all others in the vulgar
tongue as having shades, doubtless because red, being the colour of
blood and so of danger, always makes a strong appeal to the mind, an
appeal which, among the responses, has led to special names being given
to four of its tones.
The sense of hearing again, upon which speech is wholly dependent, has
given rise to a multitude of words, many of them closely imitative of
the sound, or onomatopoetic, with which words English, like the related
German, is richly adorned.
Touch also has produced a number of descriptive epithets—“hot,” “cold,”
“wet,” “dry,” “moist,” “clammy,” “rough,” “smooth,” as well as those
like “heavy” and “light,” from the deep tactile sensibility.
Even taste has its vocabulary, a complete one, as it happens, since each
of the four varieties of taste has its own appropriate name—“sweet,”
“sour,” “bitter,” and “salt.”
But smell is speechless. We can truthfully say that in our native
English language there is not a single word characterising any one of
all the myriad odours in the world.
No doubt there are many words that we do apply to smells. But they are
either borrowed from the vocabulary of one of the other senses, in order
to describe a state of mind induced by the smell, or else they originate
from some known odoriferous object.
Thus in the opening paragraph of this book we encountered a large number
of olfactory words. But they are all vague; some applying to pleasant,
some to unpleasant, odours. Many of them are very expressive, for
disgust begets strong language. But although our olfactory vocabulary
may be forceful, it is not discriminative. In other words, it is an
emotional, not an intellectual, vocabulary.
These considerations will become more obvious as we deal with olfactory
epithets in detail.
Thus smells may be “faint” or “strong,” but so may any other sensation.
And to call a smell “sweet” leaves it but vague, while at the same time
the epithet is borrowed from the vocabulary of taste, where its meaning
is quite precise. “Pungent” is also a transposition, this time from
touch, as it is a Latin word signifying “prickly.”
In addition to such terms as these we have a small number of words which
we are in the habit of applying to certain classes of odours. “Musty” is
one of these. This adjective certainly has the look of a pure English
word about it, but, as it indicates a smell like that of mould, it is
probably derived from the Latin _mucidus_, mouldy; we cannot, therefore,
claim it to be English any more than we can claim it to be definite.
Perhaps the puff-balls of our autumn woods supply the best example of a
musty smell.
“Mawkish,” however, is certainly English, as it is derived from an old
word, still used, by the way, in Scotland—“mauk,” a maggot. “Dank,”
again, means moist, and is the smell of damp, cold places. “Stuffy”
also, which is a modern application to a smell, is the odour of a close,
badly ventilated room, where we feel oppressed, as if half stifled.
But these words—and there are not many more of them—are only applied
vaguely and to general classes of odours. We never say of any one in
particular that, _e.g._, “This is the smell called ‘dank,’” in the
precise way we can say: “That colour is green,” or “That sound is a
whistle.”
We may even go further. We know that the flavour of things tasted is an
olfactory sensation. Now while language attains to precision in
characterising the sensations of pure taste, as we have just seen, it is
significant that flavours are left unnamed, except in the manner we have
just explained for olfactory epithets.
The scanty number of odorous terms in English has of late been copiously
added to by words borrowed from other languages, chiefly, it is said,
from the Persian.
“Musk,” for instance, is Persian. “Aroma” is pure Greek, and if Liddell
and Scott’s suggested derivation of ἄρωμα (a spice) from the Sanscrit
_ghrâ_ (a smell) is correct, then the original meaning of “aromatic” is
merely “smelly.” “Mephitic,” not a popular word even now, comes from the
Latin _mephitis_, “a foul, pestilential exhalation from the ground,
often sulphury in character, as from volcanic regions.” The brimstone
odour of the devil—of which more anon—is mephitic.
Now we must here discriminate. Etymologists, delving down among the
roots of our spoken language, come, so they say, to a point at which
even the simplest epithet, even the plainest description of a sensation,
is seen to derive from some object. Obviously this must be so in the
beginning, whether or not etymologists are always correct in their
particular ascriptions. An adjective describing, and later denoting, a
quality, is generalised from some object bearing that quality. A “stony”
countenance is a countenance rigid as stone. So in like manner, we are
told, even the names of colours, deeply embedded in the language though
they be, are ultimately referable to objects bearing that colour.
“Brown,” to take the least dubitable instance, is the colour of
burnt—“brunt”—things, while “blue,” according to authority, like the
Scots “blae,” means “livid” really, and is connected with “blow,” being
the colour left after a blow. (But we say “a black eye”!)
Thus the descriptive epithets not only of smell, but also of sight, are
ultimately derived from objects. But there is this great difference
between them: the names of colours take us back to near the original
trunk from which the Aryan languages branch off, whereas the names of
odours, to this day still vague and indeterminate (at least in popular
phraseology), are derived from the spoken tongue of to-day, or, in some
cases, from foreign languages, and are, therefore, but recent additions.
This delay in the naming of classes of odours justifies the statement
made at the outset of this section that smell is speechless. It shows,
in other words, that although, as we have seen, its influence upon the
mind may be profound, yet that influence does not extend as far as the
speech-centres. It remains largely in the subconsciousness.
We should be guilty of error, however, were we to conclude that the
scantiness of olfactory names is due to the lack of recognition by the
consciousness of early man of smell in general, or to a failure to
distinguish between different odours, because savages, in general less
discriminating and analytical than cultured races, have, there is every
reason to believe, a more acute and highly perfected olfactory sense. It
has been reported that the North American Indian was able to track his
enemy or his game by the scent alone, and Humboldt has recorded a
similar acuteness on the part of the Indians of Peru. While admitting
the marvellous skill of the American Indians in following up their
quarry, most of us will, I imagine, be inclined to doubt whether its
dependence upon smell is a true inference from the facts observed. Skill
in woodcraft can be brought to such marvellous perfection that it may
seem like magic to the onlooker—like magic, or like scent!
Further, although we are able to distinguish clearly enough between
different odours, the identification and the naming of odours does not
come easy to us. _Parfumeurs_ and druggists, no doubt, by the daily
education of the sense, attain to a high degree of skill in this art,
but those who have not cultivated their powers will find it very
difficult, as the amusing parlour-game of guessing the names of
concealed foodstuffs and spices shows. The difficulty is, like the
paucity of olfactory terms, probably due to an absence of ready
communication between the olfactory and speech centres in the brain.
CHAPTER V
SMELL IN FOLK-LORE, RELIGION, AND HISTORY
Evidence of olfactory influences is encountered in folk-lore not
infrequently, particularly in connection with primitive medicine, and
survivals of old olfactory methods of treatment are still extant, not
only in the doings of the wise women of our remoter country villages,
but also, as we shall see, in modern scientific medicine.
Treatment by fumigation is perhaps the most widely prevalent of these.
Probably the earliest motive for “smoking” a patient was merely the
replacing of an offensive by a pleasant odour, as we find it frequently
employed in malodorous conditions. Here the practice links up with
ancient ideas on epidemic diseases.
Behind this rationale, however, there lies perhaps the idea of
association of death with the fœtor of decomposition and the expectation
that a pleasant aromatic odour will naturally “obviate the tendency to
death.” This view of the matter must have become strengthened among
nations like the ancient Egyptians, who had discovered that aromatic
substances might be relied upon to preserve the body after death. Even
in recent times and countries similar customs have prevailed. Scott in
“The Bride of Lammermoor” tells us that rosemary, southernwood, rue and
other plants were in Scotland strewn on the body after death, and were
“burned by way of fumigation in the chimney.”
Be that as it may, we find fumigation employed all over the world as a
rite of purification, particularly during the menstrual and puerperal
periods, women being at those times regarded as unclean or taboo.
Later, in the natural course of evolution, fumigation comes under the
category of anti-demoniac remedies.
When disease was ascribed to the operation of demons in residence in the
patient’s body, a belief at one time world-wide in its distribution, the
treatment mostly relied upon to cure the disease, and, granting the
premises, a perfectly rational therapeutic method, was by various
devices to render the patient’s body too uncomfortable for the demon.
And among many other modes of securing this desirable end was the
smoking of the demon out by strong odours, fumes being generated around
the patient by burning horns, hair, and certain odoriferous woods and
plants. Among the Chippeway Indians, we are told, a species of cypress
was set on fire for this purpose, and the efficacy of the remedy was
heightened by the needle-shaped leaves of the tree flying off and
sticking in the spirit.
Sometimes a medical man may feel disposed to smile when he sees the
priest in church “censing” the Bible in order to drive away the evil one
before he begins to read it. Yet fumigation has lingered on long in
medicine as well as in religion. During the severe epidemics of cholera
in Egypt not so many years ago, hundreds of pounds weekly were spent
upon bonfires of sulphur in the streets of Cairo, a method of
disinfection more likely to drive off demons than to destroy the comma
bacillus in the drinking-water!
In mediæval, Jacobean, and Georgian medicine, fumigation was a favourite
remedy. Every one, for example, is familiar with the old-fashioned
treatment of fainting by burning feathers under the nose. And perfumes
and aromatics in general were widely used in the medicine of those days,
as the following extract from Salmon’s “Dispensatory” (1696) shows:
“_Balsamum Apoplecticum Horstii_, Apoplectick Balsam of Horstius.
“_Take of the Oils of Nutmegs_ ℥i, _of white Amber rectified_ ℥ʃ,
_Roses (commonly called Adeps Rosarum) of Cinnamon_ A. ℈i., _of
Lavender_, _of Marjoram_ A. grs. xv. _of Benjamin_, _of Rue_ A. ℈ʃ
_of Cloves_, _of Citrons_ A. grs. iv. _Mix all well together, then
add Ambergrise_ ʒʃ, _Oriental Civet_ ℈iv., _Choice Musk_ ʒi. _Mix
all according to Art, to the just consistence of a Balsam._
“_Salmon._ The Oil of Nutmegs is that made by expression, all the
rest are Chymical. _Horstius_ saith, that in the whole Republick of
Medicine, there is scarcely found an Apoplectick Balsam more
illustrious for Fame, more noble for Virtue, more worthy for Honour,
more ready for Help, and more fragrant for smell, than this. It
chears and comforts all the spirits, natural, vital, and animal, by
anointing the extremities of the Nostrils and the Pulses. It cures
Convulsions, Palsies, Numbness, and other Diseases proceeding of
cold.”
The modern physician may think this Balsam “apoplectick” in a sense
never dreamt of by its author; nevertheless he must also sigh for the
faith that believed all those wonders.
Here is another from the same source for “the strengthening of memory”:
“_Balsamum Maemonicus_ (sic) _Sennerti_. Balsam for the loss of
Memory.
“℞ _of the juices of Bawm_, _Basil_, _flowers of Sage_, _Lillies_,
_Primroses_, _Rosemary_, _Lavender_, _Borrage_, _Broom_, A. ℥ii.;
_Aqua Vitae_, _Water-lillies_, _Roses_, _Violets_, A. ℥i.; _Cubebs_,
_Cardamoms_, _Grains of Paradise_, _yellow Sanders_, _Corpo
balsamum_, _Orrice_, _Saffron_, _Savory_, _Peony_, _Tyme_, A. ℥ʃ;
_Storax liquid and Calamita_, _Opopanax_, _Bdellium_, _Galbanum_,
_Gum of Ivy_, _Labdanum_, A. ʒvi.; _Roots of Peony_, _long
Birthwort_, _Oils of Turpentine_, _Spike_, _Costus_, _Juniper_,
_Bays_, _Mastick_, _Baben_, _Lavender_, A. ʒv. _Pouder them that are
to be poudered, then mix and distil in an Alembick, with a gradual
fire; separate the Balsam from the Water._
“_Salmon._ In this we have put flowers of Sage instead of Mynica or
Tamarisk: otherwise it is _verbatim_. It is a truly noble Cephalick,
and it is reported to cause a perpetual memory, both Water and
Balsom are excellent good against all cold Diseases: you may anoint
the hinder part of the Head, the Nostrils and Ears therewith. Dose
gut. iii. ad vi. This is that Balsam which _Charles_, Duke of
_Burgundy_ bought of an English Doctor for 10000 Florentines.”
It is to be noted, by the way, the odours do not “strengthen the memory”
as a whole; what they do is to revive special memories.
The use of perfumes like camphor to ward off infection has long been in
vogue. The pompous doctors of Hogarth’s time—just 200 years ago—carried
walking-sticks the hollow handle of which formed a receptacle for
camphor, musk, or other pungent substances, which they held to their
noses when visiting patients, to guard against the smells that to them
spelt infection. And the air of the Old Bailey used to be, and indeed
still is, sweetened with herbs strewn on the Bench, lest the prisoner
about to be condemned to death by the rope might return the compliment
and sentence his judge to death by gaol-fever. To this day, also, herbs
are strewn about the Guildhall on state and ceremonial occasions, an
interesting survival.
Demoniac possession was also largely responsible for the nauseous and
disgusting remedies of which early medicine, both among the folk and
among the more educated medical men, was very fond.
Paracelsus was a great believer in such concoctions, one of which,
_zebethum occidentale_, was his own invention. Fortunately I am not
compelled to divulge the constitution of this remarkable remedy. All I
need say is that it was by no means the “cassia, sandal-buds, and
stripes of labdanum” of Browning’s “Paracelsus”!
Those unspeakable medicaments were (and are still) sometimes applied
externally, sometimes administered internally. One of the most absurd
variants of this class was the holding of divers foulsmelling mixtures
under the patient’s nose for the cure of hysteria, the idea being that
the stench would repel the “mother” from the patient’s throat, whither
it had wandered through sheer boredom and lack of interest elsewhere.
Nevertheless, out of these most absurd and to us meaningless methods of
treatment modern medicine has here and there selected remedies which
experiment and experience have proved to be of value; valerian, for
example, which is still largely employed for hysterical conditions, and
asafœtida (popularly named “devil’s dung”).
As a matter of fact, many pungent, strong-smelling substances are
powerful cardiac and muscular stimulants.
Nor must we overlook the carminatives, the pleasantly smelling dill,
aniseed, rue and peppermint, the very names of which bring to our minds
the sweetness of old country places and the efforts, not always vain, to
quiet screaming country babies! Well are they named the _carminatives_,
acting as they do “like a charm.”
In the Æneid we are told how once upon a time his divine mother was
revealed to pious Æneas by a heavenly odour. And although Lucian
intimates that the gods themselves enjoyed the smell of incense, yet,
according to Elliot Smith, the real object of incense-burning was to
impart the body-odour of the god to his worshippers. Something of the
kind, whatever the primary motive may have been, must have been needed,
one would imagine, to drown the unpleasant smells from the abattoirs in
the temples where the sacrificial animals were slaughtered.
The wrath of the Lord God of the Hebrews after the Flood, it will be
remembered, was appeased when he smelled the sweet savour of the burnt
offerings of Noah on his emergence from the Ark. The sacrifice was, of
course, the meal of the god, the flesh of bullocks, rams, doves, and
what not, being spiritualised by the flames and so transformed into food
a spirit could absorb. The Greek gods, it is true, refreshed themselves
with such ethereal delicacies as nectar and ambrosia, but they were by
no means indifferent to the square meal of roast beef so punctiliously
provided for them by human purveyors. Homer is always careful to mention
that, as often as a feast was toward, neither the gods nor the bards
were forgotten, the former being fed before and the latter after the
heroes themselves had been satisfied.
When, following the Persian division of the unseen world of spirits into
good and bad, the idea of an evil-minded and consistently hostile god
became popular, his odour was naturally enough the opposite of that of
the kindly gods. And as in time he came to assume some of the attributes
of the Roman _di inferni_, he, like the dragons of an even greater
antiquity, sported the sulphury odour of his underground dwelling.
The Northern nations of ancient Europe, Grimm tells us, believed that
hell was a place of burning pitch, whence arose an intolerable stench.
Our English word “smell” is obviously related to a German dialect word
for hell—_smela_—which in turn is itself akin to the Bohemian _smola_,
resin or pitch.
The Christian “hell” was thus the lineal descendant of the subterranean
“Hades” of the pagans, and what its stench was like may be gathered from
that of the noxious fumes that rise out of clefts in volcanic rocks,
such fumes, we may suppose, as in earlier days threw the Oracle at
Delphi into her prophetic trances. (Some authorities, however, say that
it was the smoke of burning bay-leaves that the Oracle inhaled.)
The offensive odour of hell adheres to all the devils right down to
modern times. In the Middle Ages you could always tell the Evil One by
his sulphurous stink, but, unfortunately for the tempted, it was not
usually observed until after his departure.
But evil odours not only attended the devil himself: they were also
generated by the sins. For St. Joseph of Copertino, “seeing beneath the
envelope of the body,” was able to recognise the sins of the flesh by
their odour. And St. Paconi, so it was said, could even smell out
heretics in his day, presumably in the same way as witches are now
discovered in Africa.
Moreover, as the devil and his minions are attended with a vile smell,
the odour of their infernal home, so naturally they detest what we call
sweet and aromatic perfumes and are repelled by them, as the following
tale from Sinistrari of Ameno shows. I give it _verbatim_ as it appears
in Sax Rohmer’s “Romance of Sorcery”:
“In a certain monastery of holy nuns there lived as a boarder a
young maiden of noble birth who was tempted by an Incubus, that
appeared to her by day and by night, and with the most earnest
entreaties, the manners of a most passionate lover, incessantly
incited her to sin; but she, supported by the grace of God and the
frequent use of the Sacraments, stoutly resisted the temptation. But
all her devotions, fasts, and vows notwithstanding, despite the
exorcisms, the blessings, the injunctions showered by exorcists on
the Incubus that he should desist from molesting her, in spite of
the crowd of relics and other holy objects collected in the maiden’s
room, of the lighted candles kept burning there all night, the
Incubus none the less persisted in appearing to her as usual in the
shape of a very handsome young man.
“At last among other learned men whose advice had been taken on the
subject was a very erudite Theologian, who, observing that the
maiden was of a thoroughly phlegmatic temperament, surmised that the
Incubus was an aqueous demon (there are in fact, as is testified by
Guaccius, igneous, aerial, phlegmatic, earthly, subterranean demons,
who avoid the light of day) and prescribed an uninterrupted
fumigation of the room.
“A new vessel, made of glass like earth, was accordingly brought in,
and filled with sweet cane, cubeb seed, roots of both aristolochies,
great and small cardamom, ginger, long-pepper, caryophylleae,
cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmegs, calamite, storax, benzoin, aloes
wood and roots, one ounce of triapandalis, and three pounds of half
brandy and water; the vessel was then set on hot ashes in order to
distil the fumigating vapour, and the cell was kept closed.
“As soon as the fumigation was done, the Incubus came, but never
dared enter the cell; only, if the maiden left it for a walk in the
garden or the cloister, he appeared to her, though invisible to
others, and, throwing his arms around her neck, stole or rather
snatched kisses from her, to her intense disgust.
“At last, after a new consultation, the Theologian prescribed that
she should carry about her person pills made of the most exquisite
perfumes, such as musk, amber, chive, Peruvian balsam, etc. Thus
provided, she went for a walk in the garden, where the Incubus
suddenly appeared to her with a threatening face, and in a rage. He
did not approach her, however, but, after biting his finger as if
meditating revenge, disappeared, and was nevermore seen by her.”
On the other hand, the odour of sanctity in mediæval times was a much
more real perfume than that in which the Jackdaw of Reims died. It does
not seem, so far as I can make out from my reading, that the sweet smell
of the Saints was ever remarked in the early centuries of the Christian
era. The odour diffused around his pillar by St. Simeon Stylites, for
example, was by no means pleasant. But by A.D. 1000 the sweetness of the
Saints’ persons was beginning to pervade the religious atmosphere.
Writing about that time, Odericus Vitalis tells us that “from the
sepulchre of St. Andrew” (at Patras, Asia Minor) “manna like flour and
oil of an exquisite odour flow, which indicate to the inhabitants of
that country” what the crops will be like that year. And the example
thus set by this apostle is followed by all other saintly personages for
many centuries.
In England, we read that when the Blessed Martyr Alban’s burial place on
the hill above Verulamium was opened, in obedience to a sign from heaven
in the shape of a flash of lightning, the good people were enraptured by
the delicious fragrance of the Saint’s remains, and the same
characteristic attended those of the later martyr Thomas à Becket.
St. Thomas à Kempis is credited with the statement that the chamber of
the blessed Leduine was so charmingly odorous that people who were
privileged to enter it were delighted, and wishing to enjoy her perfume
to the full, were wont to approach their faces close to the bosom of the
Saint, “who seemed to have become a casket in which the Lord had
deposited His most precious perfumes.” After the death of St. Theresa a
salt-cellar which had been placed in her bed preserved for a long time a
most delicious odour. And so on indefinitely, some of the stories being,
as might be expected, a little too plain-spoken and artless for modern
readers.
It is difficult to account for the pleasant odour of Saints whose pride
it was to live without change of raiment, to harbour parasites, and to
abstain from washing. Nevertheless that certain persons exhale a
naturally pleasant aroma from their bodies is true. Alexander the Great
is noted by Plutarch as having so sweet an odour that his tunics were
soaked with aromatic perfume, and taking a flying leap through the pages
of history, we come to Walt Whitman, who had the same characteristic.
Indeed, a piny aromatic odour, of considerable strength, is occasionally
noticeable in certain people, and I can myself testify that it becomes
stronger on the approach of their death.
We are not often told when historical heroes were unpleasant in this
respect, but in the case of Louis XIV. we have the authoritative
evidence of Madame Montespan, who after their “divorce, when having a
public set-to with her sun-god in the glittering _salles_ of Versailles,
discomfited that little, red-heeled, bewigged, and pompous mannikin with
the following broadside:
“With all my imperfections, at least I do not smell as badly as you do!”
His ancestor, “Lewis the Eleventh,” says Burton in “The Anatomy of
Melancholy,” “had a conceit everything did stink about him. All the
odoriferous perfumes they could get would not ease him, but still he
smelled a filthy stink.”
A modern rhinologist would suspect this monarch of having been afflicted
with maxillary antrum suppuration. It will be noted, however, that there
is no record that the odour he himself perceived was perceptible to
others. The fœtor, as we say, was subjective, not objective, in which
respect it differed from that of another historical personage, Benjamin
Disraeli to wit, who was the subject probably of the disease known as
ozæna. (See later.)
CHAPTER VI
THE ULTIMATE
In a former chapter we dwelt upon the curious fact that memories aroused
by olfactory stimuli are independent of the will. Now there is yet
another way in which smell ignores the head of the cerebral hierarchy.
Although on occasion confining its operations to the subconsciousness,
and exercising, so to speak, only a backstairs influence upon the mind,
olfaction much more frequently insists upon recognition, breaking in
upon our privacy, like a disreputable acquaintance, at most inopportune
moments.
If you do not wish to see you can look the other way. When you would
rather not hear you can be inattentive. A proffered handshake you can
ignore. A dish you dislike you may decline. But you can’t help
smelling—no, not even if you turn up your nose.
Olfaction is thus the great leveller among the senses, equality having
here a reality but rarely found elsewhere. For odour makes its way into
the nose of king and cadger, duke and drayman, lady and lout,
indifferently. Nay, by an ironical law of olfaction the fœtors are more
powerful than the fragrances, and vervain the feeble turns tail before
the onslaught of scatol (as well it might, indeed!), in which case there
is nothing to be done but to bear it (without the grin mostly); or to
follow the wise example of vervain; or to remove the offence, as we have
done in England these latter days, only to render ourselves, as I have
carefully pointed out in Chapter I., all the more sensitive to it when
it does come.
To many of us it comes on the dog.
This animal has a regrettable fondness for wallowing, diligently and
with forethought, in the Abominable, until his coat is thoroughly well
impregnated. For no other reason, I do verily believe, than, as he
thinks, to give his human friends for once some of the olfactory
pleasure he himself enjoys. A treat he thinks it, without any doubt.
Just look at the smirk of pride and satisfaction on his face as he trots
in and resumes his place on the drawing-room hearthrug and the amazement
with which he receives the sudden toe of your boot!
And yet he rolls himself over on the odoriferous for the same reason
that a fashionable lady has orris-root put in her bath; namely, for the
pleasure and gratification of society at large. There are who say that
my lady’s perfume seems as vile to her Pekinese as his then does to her!
If so, he is the more tolerant animal of the two.
Anyhow, he certainly has the knack of thrusting the Unmentionable upon
the attention of the most fastidious, and smell is no longer speechless.
Now, if we are to treat fully of things olfactory, we must at least take
cognisance of the Unmentionable. But to extend our notice would take us
across the garden to the muckrake and the dunghill. And such nearer
investigation and description I must decline, even although in these
days of outspokenness I may have to apologise for Victorian
squeamishness. To attain merit as a writer the advice now given you is:
Be frank! And if you disgust, why, so much the better!
That may be so. I do not question the value of the advice, not for a
moment. All I say is that I prefer not to take it. And if somebody else
desires this particular laurel-crown, this crown of tainted laurel, he
shall wear it without arousing any envy upon my part, albeit, as I know
full well, this is a branch of the subject which illuminates many
obscurities and seeming eccentricities in human conduct. I know all
about that, but, as Herodotus so often says, I am not going to tell all
I know, although, I fear, an allusion or two may be necessary.
We may take it as on the whole true that a repulsive odour is a
dangerous odour. Not invariably, however. Otherwise grouse in their
season would not be esteemed a dainty and Gorgonzola would everywhere be
buried. Nevertheless in these high realms palatability is limited to
quite a narrow streak. There is a level beyond which the boldest
gastronomic adventurer dare not climb.
It is remarkable that the liking for half-decomposed food, although an
acquired taste, is found everywhere in the world, among savage and
civilised, rich and poor, high and low—but not among young and old. For
young people do not usually approve of such _recherché_ flavours. It
would be a mistake, however, to argue from that fact that these savoury
meats act as fillips to a sense jaded with age, because it is generally
agreed that neither smell nor taste declines in acuteness as we grow
old. On the contrary, they become more instructed, more particular, more
delicate. Appetite declines if you like, but taste and smell abide
increasingly unto the end.
Nevertheless we can only look upon this particular liking as acquired,
since the high relish of one country but fills its neighbours with
disgust.
It is worthy of remark, perhaps, that the last whiff, the final
sublimated breath of ripe Gorgonzola as it passes over, is a faint
suggestion of ammonia. Curiously enough, this always fills my
imagination with the sack of cities and the end of all things in smoke
and thunder. It may be because the penultimate phase of life itself is
ammonia. Fire, slaughter, and much more besides come quite promptly to
this gas for the City of Destruction, what there is left of the
remainder in dust and ashes being but a handful for the wind.
To the keen-sensed medical man certain morbid states can be recognised
by their exhalations. I have even heard of an enthusiast on the subject
who alluded to them as “both visible and tangible”; but that, I think,
must be exceptional.
Physicians of the last generation used to speak of typhus fever as
having a close, mawkish odour, and the smell of smallpox is horrible.
But these, as well as the appalling stench of the hospitals in olden
days, are among the smells which have, for the most part, fled our
country.
There are others, however, less powerful and repugnant, which are still
with us, and which we recognise as among the prominent characteristics
of certain maladies, the acid smell of acute rheumatism for one, and I
have sometimes thought I could detect a characteristic odour also in
acute nephritis, a smell resembling that of chaff. The odour of a big
hæmorrhage is unmistakable and, to obstetricians particularly, ominous.
Then there is the smell of mice which attends upon the skin disease
known as favus.
The breath of a chronic drunkard is familiar enough to everybody, and
the more delicate aroma in the circumambient atmosphere of the careful
tippler, ethereal and by no means unpleasant, will often reveal to the
physician the hidden cause of obscure symptoms. It is particularly
valuable when your patient is, as so many of these secret drinkers are,
a woman, it may be a woman of good social standing.
A disease-odour of great value and significance is the sweet-smelling
breath caused by acetone poisoning in the later stages of diabetes.
A sweet smell is also said by Bacon to attend plague:
“The plague is many times taken without a manifest sense, as hath
been said. And they report that, where it is found, it hath the
scent of a smell of a mellow apple; and (as some say) of
May-flowers; and it is also received that smells of flowers that are
mellow and luscious are ill for the plague, as white lilies,
cowslips and hyacynth.” (Quoted by Creighton, “A History of British
Epidemics,” p. 685, f.n.)
Death sometimes heralds his approach by means of an odour, said in some
parts of the country to bring ravens about the house, which may well be
true, as it is apparently a summons of the same nature that calls the
Indian vulture in flocks from apparently untenanted skies. Birds in
general, however, seem to belong to the microsmatic group of animals,
relying chiefly upon their vision, which is often highly perfected,
particularly for distance.
Much has been made, too much perhaps, of the part played by olfaction in
the sex-life, and its undoubted prominence in the coupling of
four-footed animals is pointed to as an indication of its potency in
mankind also. But the reasoning is fallacious. Olfactory influences
predominate in these animals simply because olfaction is their principal
sense.
Among birds, now, courtship and marriage are conducted without any
apparent aid from olfaction, and in no group of beings, not even in
mankind, is the poetic side of courtship, both before and after
marriage, so highly developed and so beautifully displayed. In their
love-making the birds appeal to each other through the ear in their
songs, and through the eye in the nuptial splendours of the male,
splendours which he parades with glorious pomp before what often seems
to be, indeed, but a lackadaisical and indifferent spouse.
As we have already seen, this independence of olfactory stimuli is, so
far as obvious indications go, also the case with human lovers. True, we
have numerous references by poets to the sweetness of their ladies’
breath, only one, as far as I know, being blunt enough to say:
“And in some perfumes there is more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.”
But the sum and substance of Havelock Ellis’s exhaustive inquiry on this
point is undoubtedly this, that if a lover loves the aroma of his lady,
that is because of his love, not because of her inherent sweetness. In
other words, the attraction, subtle though it be, at least in the early
or romantic stage, is seldom or never obviously olfactory. It is the
suggestion of closer intimacy that constitutes the attraction of her
nearer environment, and this suggestion is the offspring of the lover’s
imagination.
As to the influence of her personal emanation in the second, the
realistic, stage, there also, it would seem, its power is subsidiary,
certainly to that of touch, although more active than that of sight and
hearing, seeing that the holy of holies is only unveiled in darkness and
in silence.
As for our opinion in everyday life, I think most people will subscribe
to the old adage “_Mulier bene olet dum nihil olet_.”
CHAPTER VII
SMELL AND THE PERSONALITY
Whatever of myth there may be in the quaint stories we related in
Chapter V., there is no doubt about this, that there is great variety
among different individuals in respect to their personal atmosphere. I
mean the natural atmosphere of the person, of course, not the artificial
airs that surround and envelop the beperfumed modern lady.
There is no need to enlarge upon this branch of our subject. Those who
are curious about it may apply themselves to Havelock Ellis for more
detailed information. What I am concerned with here is something much
less commonplace and obvious, the question, namely, whether we
disseminate and receive, each of us, anything less material than the
odours we are conscious of.
In addition to his other olfactory accomplishments, our friend the dog
seems to be able to distinguish by smell when a strange dog is to be
cultivated as a friend or wrangled with as a foe, and nothing is more
amusing to watch than the careful and even suspicious olfactory
investigation two dogs meeting for the first time make of each other’s
odours, during which exchange of credentials a state of armed neutrality
exists, to pass, apparently as a result of some mysterious olfactory
decision, either into frank, open, and unchangeable hostility, or into
friendship equally frank, open, and unchangeable.
But what it is that makes one dog smell to another of enmity or of
friendship is as mysterious as—the mutual attraction or repulsion felt
for each other by two human beings, shall we say? For, of course, this
suspense of judgment on encountering a new-comer is a human no less than
a canine trait. There were physiognomists before Lavater, since we are
naturally influenced by what our senses, and especially our eyes and our
ears, tell us about a person we are meeting for the first time. We like
the look of the man, his expression, his smile, the character of his
movements, bodily as well as facial; we find the intonation of his
voice, his accent, his laugh, agreeable. Or we don’t. And our decision
is curiously independent of his moral character, even after we have got
to know that side of him. Now, this act of judgment seems to us to be
quite independent of any olfactory evidence. We rely upon our
predominant senses just as the dog relies upon his. Yet I sometimes
catch myself wondering whether olfaction, olfaction rarefied and refined
beyond imagining, does not without our knowledge play some part in our
estimate of the pros and cons in character.
What is conveyed to us by the “personality” of a man? Here we have
apparently a complex of sense-impressions, for the most part vague,
which we are seldom able to analyse, even to ourselves. Still less can
we put it into words capable of conveying our impression to other
people. “There is _something_ about him that I like” is about the
sum-total of our attempts at description.
And if this be true as between man and man, it is even more often
remarked as between man and woman. Meredith it is, I think, who says
that the surest way to a woman’s heart is through her eye. Fortunately
for most of us, his dictum is open to question. Otherwise the human race
would soon come to an end. Now, although, unlike Meredith, I cannot
claim the rank of a high-priest in the temple of Venus, yet so far as I
may dare to express an opinion upon a matter so recondite, not to say
mysterious, I should rather be inclined to say that the surest route is
by way of her ear, and I am fortified in my belief by an authority as
erudite in these matters as Meredith himself, Shakespeare to wit:
“That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.”
John Wilkes, they say, to all appearance a “most uninteresting-looking
man,” asked for only half an hour of a start to beat the handsomest
gentleman in England at the game of games. Women forgot what he was like
as soon as he began to talk.
Who has not seen women turning sidelong glances, with that surreptitious
intentness we all know so well, towards some very ordinary man in whose
voice they, but not we, detect the indefinable something that has the
power of luring these shy creatures from their inaccessible retreats?
What man has not seen this play and puzzled over it? The quality—is it
perhaps something caressing, or something brutal and ultra-masculine, or
both at once? Who knows what it is that their intuition perceives?
So we ask, we less favoured mortals, as we turn and look at him also,
hard and long, only to give it up with a shrug!
When I am one of a crowd under the spell of an orator—a rare bird, by
the way, in England—I feel his power less in what he says than in how he
says it. Gladstone, for example, swayed his audience by the fervour of
his personality, not by any beauty of word or thought in his rhetoric.
How meaningless his speeches seem to us nowadays as we vainly try to
read them, how involved, discursive, ambiguous, turgid. How dull! And
yet we know that these same involved, discursive, ambiguous, turgid and
dull speeches could and did rouse hard-bitten Scotsmen to a wildness of
enthusiasm that seems to us incredible.
Thus the personality is something that travels on the wings of sound.
But is that all? Is there not something more, something imperceptible
which yet exercises a secret power over our emotions and passions? Is
there an olfactory aura?
“Why does the elevation of the Host in a Roman Catholic church bring
such an assurance of peace to the congregation?” writes a friend of
mine. “This remarkable sensation I have myself frequently
experienced and wondered at. Yet I am, as you know, a Scots
Presbyterian, and do not credit for a single moment the miraculous
change of bread and wine. And yet to this gracious and comforting
influence I have been subject on more than one occasion. It is for
all the world as if the constant pin-pricks of our normal life were
suspended for a moment or two.
“It is present only during service, and then only at the culmination
of the rite.
“As I do not believe in the miracle, the influence must come to me
from without, not from within myself. Indeed, I have actually come
to the conclusion that it is borne in upon me not by the church
atmosphere with its incense, nor by the solemn intonation of the
priest, nor by the whisper of the muted organ, nor yet by the
distant murmur of the choir, but—by the congregation itself!
“It is from the kneeling worshippers that the mysterious influence
emanates, invisibly, inaudibly, intangibly, to suffuse with the
peace of some other world the spirit even of an unbeliever....”
Is it possible that influences such as these may enter by the olfactory
door?
This perhaps may seem to be rather a fanciful suggestion for a
scientifically trained writer to offer. But it is not wholly fanciful,
since it has some support at least from theory (whatever that may be
worth), and even from some considerations based upon solid fact.
As to theory, we have already seen how Fabre arrived at the conclusion
that the olfactory sense of certain insects is capable of receiving
stimuli to which we are insensitive, stimuli which he surmised to be of
the nature of an ethereal vibration. Consider too the following facts.
It is well known that there are people who have an instinctive dislike
of cats. The late Lord Roberts was one, and it is said of him that he
was aware of the presence of his _bête noire_ before he caught sight of
it. How was he made aware?
The same instinctive aversion is felt by some people towards spiders. I
myself know of one, a young girl, who cannot sleep if her bedroom
contains one of these creatures. She, like Lord Roberts feels without
knowing how when a spider is near her.
Here also is a letter to a newspaper from a correspondent telling the
same tale:
“SIR,
“I notice with interest that the official photographer who is to
accompany Sir Ernest Shackleton’s _Quest_ expedition has an intense
dislike of spiders. Can any of your readers explain this uncanny
horror, which I believe is shared by a large number of people?
“I myself loathe and fear spiders—so much so that I have been known
on more than one occasion to go into a darkened room and to declare
the presence of one of these creatures, my pet abomination being
subsequently discovered....
“F. E.”
What sense-organ—because there must be one—enables F. E. and others like
him (or her) to detect the presence of a small creepy-crawly?
We turn now to a series of medical cases which may throw some light upon
this peculiarity.
There are people who suffer from asthma when they go near horses. To
enter a stable or to sit behind a horse is to them a certain means of
bringing on an attack.
This susceptibility and the peculiar form taken by the reaction remind
us of hay fever. In sufferers from this troublesome complaint the pollen
of certain plants has an irritating effect upon the mucous surfaces of
the eyes, nose, and bronchial tubes. So in like manner recent
investigation has shown that there is in the blood of the horse a
proteid substance which acts as an irritant poison to those susceptible
people. Their asthma, therefore, is merely a manifestation of the
irritation produced by the poisonous body or its emanation when it is
borne to them through the air. Similarly we are justified in arguing
that cats and spiders may throw off an effluvium which is irritating to
those susceptible to it.
But it is to be noted that the antipathy in these last instances
manifests itself, not in a tissue change, but in a feeling of the mind,
an emotion. Nay more, these people do not smell the cat or the spider,
except in the way that James I. “smelled” gunpowder. Nevertheless, the
irritant must travel through the air as an odour does, and it probably
enters the organism by the mucous membrane of the nose.
But does it act upon the olfactory cells? Here we encounter, I must
confess, a serious obstacle to an acceptance of this theory.
The interior of the nose is sensitive not only to odours, but also to
certain chemical irritants. Any one who has peeled a raw onion or has
taken a good sniff at a bottle of strong smelling-salts knows what I
mean. Now, the chemical irritant, in the latter case ammonia gas,
affects not the olfactory nerve, but certain naked nerve fibrils in the
mucous membrane belonging to what is known as the fifth cranial nerve, a
nerve of simple sensation.[2] And the simultaneous irritation of the
eyelids, and in the case of the pollen and horse effluvia the bronchial
tubes, shows that these resemble in their action the simple chemical
irritants, and not the odours.
Footnote 2:
The difference between those two sensations becomes clearly evident
when an anosmic person is peeling an onion. The usual irritation of
the eyes and nose is felt and manifested, but the patient is unaware
of any odour.
It must be remembered, however, that, as we have said, the cat and the
spider effluvia induce an emotional effect simply, without local
irritation. And emotional change not only follows, it may also precede,
the perception of an odour.
The following anecdote of Goethe, for example, shows how smell may
affect the personality before it is recognised as an odour by the
consciousness:
“An air that was beneficial to Schiller acted on me like poison,”
Goethe said to Eckermann. “I called on him one day, and as I did not
find him at home, I seated myself at his writing-table to note down
various matters. I had not been seated long before I felt a strange
indisposition steal over me, which gradually increased, until at
last I nearly fainted. At first I did not know to what cause I
should ascribe this wretched, and to me unusual, state, until I
discovered that a dreadful odour issued from a drawer near me. When
I opened it I found, to my astonishment, that it was full of rotten
apples. I immediately went to the window, and inhaled the fresh air,
by which I was instantly restored. Meanwhile his wife came in, and
told me that the drawer was always filled with rotten apples,
because the scent was beneficial to Schiller, and he could not live
without it.”
I wish to emphasise, for the sake of my argument, that Goethe underwent
a profound constitutional disturbance, with its attendant discomfort,
before he realised that its cause was an odour.
If, then, an odour can induce such emotional changes without attracting
attention to itself, the suggestion is not, after all, so very
far-fetched that an emanation proceeding from the worshippers at the
moment of the elevation of the Host in a Roman Catholic church may be
transmitted to the bystanders through the olfactory door to induce in
them an emotion similar to that felt by the initiated.
It may be objected that Goethe’s experience and that of my friend are
not alike, since Goethe plainly, though tardily, became aware of a real
odour. It must be remembered, however, that Goethe was a scientist and
naturally gifted, besides, with an unusual power of introspective
analysis. He found the cause of his disturbance because he sought for
it.
Moreover, we learn from Havelock Ellis that during religious excitement
a real (and pleasant) odour is sometimes perceptible in the atmosphere
around the faithful.
May it not also be the same kind of influence, transmitted in the same
way, that dominates the mind, in company with impressions received by
sight and hearing, when we are in the vicinity of other people?
Our study of smells has brought us, to be sure, into a strange region of
psychology, for it is possible that we have here one explanation of the
mysteries of crowd-psychology, of those unreasonable waves of passion
that sometimes sweep through masses of people and lead to all manner of
strange happenings, like crusades and holy wars; _autos-da-fé_;
witch-burnings; lynch-murders; State-prohibition; spiritualistic
manifestations; and other miracles.
(The somewhat uncanny “sense” we have when some one else is present in
what we suppose to be an empty room may be olfactory in origin, but it
has generally seemed to me that it is due rather to an alteration in the
echo of the room, a change in its normal sound-picture. If the room is a
strange one to us, I do not think we so readily become suspicious of the
presence of an unseen and unexpected visitor.)
CHAPTER VIII
THEORIES OF OLFACTION
(_The Pièce de Résistance_)
The anatomical structure of the olfactory end-organ in the nose is, as
we saw in Chapter II., simple.
Contrast it with the eye. Here we have what is obviously an optical
instrument, with lens, iris diaphragm, dark walls, and sensitive plate
complete—a photographic camera, in a word.
Contrast it also with the ear, which is an acoustic apparatus reminding
us in its detail of a recording gramophone leading to a closed box in
which are what look like a series of resonators, like the wires of a
piano.
In the antechamber of each of those organs the physical vibrations to
which they respond undergo considerable modification before they reach
the sensory cells.
In the antechamber of the olfactory organ, on the other hand, the amount
of modification necessary is evidently but slight, as the olfactory
region of the nasal chamber is merely a narrow, open passage. As far as
we know, all that takes place is that the incoming stimulus, the odorous
molecule, is warmed and received by the nasal mucus.
Thus the very complexity of the structure both of the eye and of the ear
helps us to comprehend their function.
But what can we deduce from a flat surface in which all we can see is a
collection of cells with minute protoplasmic hairs projecting from their
distal ends? Obviously, little or nothing. We are, in fact, confounded
by simplicity. It may be that we are here dealing with one of the
essential properties of all living matter, little, if at all, altered
from its primitive condition.
To the physiologist, then, olfaction is the most mysterious of all the
senses. It still retains its secrets, and therein lies the fascination
of its study.
Of late years, the exploration of this dark region of physiology has
been, and is still being, vigorously pushed, and we shall now proceed to
give what, however, can only be a brief and superficial account of the
progress made and of the opinions held. Even so we shall be compelled to
make an incursion into the high and dry realms of modern chemical and
physical theory. That may not be good hearing, but what is still worse
is that almost every single point we shall be discussing is a matter of
controversy.
Let us commence with a few of the details, mostly unimportant, upon
which there is general agreement.
Consider, first of all, the variety, the almost infinite variety, of
odours. We have, for example, all the odours of the world of Nature, the
emanations of inorganic matter, of the earth itself, its soil and its
minerals; to these we must add the multitudinous perfumes of the
vegetable kingdom, of barks, roots, leaves, flowers and fruits,
including those of growing herbaceous plants, which differ so widely
from one another that it is said of Rousseau, whose myopia was
compensated for by an unusually acute sense of smell, and who was,
moreover, no mean botanist, that he could have classified the plants
according to their smell had there been a sufficiency of olfactory terms
for the purpose; then we have the thousand effluvia, some pleasant and
others not so pleasant, of living animals, including the various races
of mankind; next come the—mostly repulsive—odours of decaying vegetable
and putrefying animal matter; and finally the products of man’s own
proud ingenuity and skill, such as the artificial perfumes and flavours
on the one hand and on the other coal-gas, acetylene, carbon disulphide,
and the like.
Parker notes it as worthy of remark that man has created, both
accidentally and intentionally, many new odours—smells, that is to say,
which have no fellow in the world of Nature—and he emphasises the fact
that the nose is nevertheless capable of appreciating such novel
sensations.
In this connection we may mention that the art of modern perfumery can
imitate closely many of the natural perfumes, and more particularly the
natural flavours, by mixing together essences, or components, which in
no way resemble the final product.
Thus the flavour of peaches can be compounded artificially of aldehyde,
acetate, formate, butyrate, valerianate, œnanthylate, and sebate of
ethyl, and salicylate of methyl, with glycerine, glycerine being added
to the fruit essences, as it is to wines, in order to restrain the
evaporation of the volatile bodies. (The fruit essences are used only in
the making of flavours. They cannot be employed as perfumes, as they are
too irritating to the nose.)
The union of components to form a product different from any one of them
is found also in vision. When the colours of the spectrum, for example,
are commingled, the resultant white light is devoid of any colour.
Thus the potential responsiveness of the olfactory organ seems to be
practically inexhaustible. So far, at all events, it has not yet reached
the limits of its capacity.
The number and variety of recognised smells being so great, then, one
can readily understand how difficult it is to construct a classification
of odours. Many attempts have, in fact, been made, but, depending as
they do more or less upon subjective sensation, no two classifiers give
us the same classification. Indeed, a division of all smells into
“nice,” “neutral,” and “nasty” would be about as good as many much more
ambitious efforts.
Zwaardemaker’s is the classification most usually followed at present,
and as it is to him we owe most of our knowledge of scientific
olfaction, we shall detail it here:
(1) Ethereal or fruity odours; (2) aromatic, including as sub-classes
camphrous, herbaceous, anisic and thymic, citronous, and the bitter
almond group; (3) balsamic, with sub-groups floral, liliaceous, and
vanillar; (4) ambrosial or muscous; (5) garlicky (including garlic),
oniony, fishy, and the bromine type of odour; (6) empyreumatic
(guaiacol); (7) caprylic (valerianic acid); (8) disgusting; and (9)
nauseating.
The subjective character of these classes is obvious, especially in the
last two groups, but, apart from that objection, most people will be
inclined to protest when they learn that chloroform and iodoform are put
into the first, the ethereal or fruity, group, while it is suggested,
though to be sure with a query, that coffee, bread, and burnt sugar may
belong to the “repulsive” (pyridine) group!
The fact is that Zwaardemaker’s classification is based upon a chemical
foundation, that is to say, upon properties which, as we shall see later
on, do not necessarily correspond with the odours as we smell them.
That, no doubt, explains his inclusion of iodoform among the “fruity”
odours.—Iodoform fruity!—Shades of George Saintsbury and his “Cellar
Book”!
A shorter classification is that of Heyninx, who, aiming at objectivity,
bases his arrangement, to some extent at all events, upon the spectrum
analysis of odorous molecules in the atmospheric medium, of which more
anon. His list is: acrid, rotten, fœtid, burning, spicy, vanillar or
ethereal, and garlicky. But here, also, the coupling of vanillar with
ethereal odours seems a little inappropriate.
We stand, perhaps, on rather firmer ground when we turn to the
manufacturer’s classification, founded as it is frankly upon subjective
sensation, and therefore devoid of any surprises to the logical faculty.
Here is Rimmel’s arrangement: rose, jasmine, orange, tuberose, violet,
balsam, spice, clove, camphor, sandal-wood, lemon, lavender, mint,
anise, almond, musk, ambergris, fruit (pear).
It may be objected, perhaps, that this is a catalogue merely, not a
scientific classification. That is quite true. But what is also true is
that the others we have quoted are little, if any, better. The fact is
that we do not yet possess the knowledge necessary to enable us to
arrange odours in classes.
The manufacturers, of course, concern themselves with agreeable and
attractive odours only. To the great and growing company of the stinks
they pay no attention whatever. For that reason their contribution to
our knowledge is necessarily but partial and limited.
In their own proper domain, however, they can point to several great
successes. They recognise, for practical purposes, about eighty
primitive scents. Many natural (to say nothing of many unnatural)
perfumes can now be prepared artificially, and some so prepared are said
to be even more powerful than the natural productions. Artificial musk,
for example, is one thousand times stronger than natural musk, Parker
tells us. Deite, on the other hand, says that the smell of artificial
musk is not equal to that of the natural! Indeed, according to this
authority, although synthetic perfumes play an important part in the
concocting of scents, there are only a few of them which can be used
instead of the natural product. What happens is that the artificial and
the natural are generally used in combination. Thus the “mignonette” of
the shops is prepared by passing geraniol, an artificial odorivector
made from citronella oil, over the natural mignonette flowers, the
resulting product being an essence smelling strongly of mignonette, and
not at all of geraniol.
One or two, as we said, are purely artificial imitations; coumarin, for
example, the “new-mown hay” of sentimental memory, which used to be
obtained from the tonka bean, is now entirely made up by the synthetic
chemist. But for all the more subtle essences we have still to rely upon
Nature’s laboratory. The manufacturer steps in and distils the precious
essential oil certainly, but it is from flowers that he obtains it.
Attar of roses, for instance, contains, in addition to natural geraniol,
a number of other ingredients which have so far escaped analysis, a
hundred thousand roses supplying only an ounce of it. In like manner a
ton of orange blossom yields but thirty to forty ounces of the odorous
essential oil.
Many of the costly plant perfumes come from tropical or semi-tropical
countries, such as Ceylon, Mexico, and Peru. But tropical perfumes,
though strong, lack the delicacy of those found in temperate climates.
Cannes, on the Riviera, gives us roses, acacias, jasmine and neroli;
from Nimes come thyme, rosemary, and lavender oil; from Nizza, on the
Italian Riviera, we get violets; from Sicily, oranges and lemons; from
Italy, iris and bergamot. English lavender, until quite recently the
most highly esteemed, came from the towns of Hitchin and Mitcham. But I
am informed that the growing of lavender in England is no longer pursued
with the same success as formerly, and we have to regret the
disappearance of this old and truly English industry.
The natural musk, curiously enough, which comes from the musk-deer of
Tibet, is not used in making musk perfume. It is, however, widely
employed in the perfumer’s art, as it has the curious property of
enhancing the strength of other perfumes and of rendering them
permanent. Civet, also an animal product, being “the very uncleanly
flux” of the civet cat, has similar properties. It is added to other
perfumes to strengthen them (“to set them off,” as it were) and to
render them more stable.
But the most curious, and also one of the most ancient of perfumes is
ambergris, which is a fatty, wax-like substance found floating in the
sea or washed ashore. It comes from places as far apart as the west
coast of Ireland, China, and South America. The origin of this substance
was for long a mystery. But we know now that it consists of the
undigested remnants of cephalopods (squids and octopuses) swallowed by
the spermaceti whale. Ambergris is used, like musk and civet, to render
other scents durable.
But while the victory of the chemist is by no means so complete as it is
in the matter of the dyestuffs, research is steadily going on, and the
next few years will almost certainly witness an evergrowing conquest
over this department of natural chemistry.
In the meantime chemists are applying themselves to the creation of new
varieties of perfume, and, if we may judge from those disseminated by
certain ladies in public places, with a success that startles and even
irritates us. Compared with them, the love-philtres of olden days must
have been but feeble things.
“How d’you know you’re in the right ’bus?” asked the ’bus conductor of
the blind man who was confidently boarding his vehicle.
“This is the Maida Vale ’bus,” was the contemptuous reply. “I knows it
by the smell o’ musk.”
The inexhaustible capacity of the olfactory organ, to which we alluded
above, is by no means its only marvel. It is also of the most wonderful
delicacy, equalling, even if it does not surpass, in this respect, the
sensitiveness of the eye to light.
This property of the smell-organ has been scientifically estimated.
There are many ways of doing so, that by means of Zwaardemaker’s
olfactometer being perhaps the most popular:
“This consists of two tubes that slide one within the other, and so
shaped that one end of the inner tube may be applied to the nostril.
The odorous material is carried on the inner surface of the outer
tube. When the inner tube, which is graduated, is slipped into the
outer one so as to cover completely its inner face, and air is drawn
into the nostril through the tube, the odorous surface, being
covered, gives out no particles, and no odour is perceived. By
adjusting the inner tube in relation to the outer one, whereby more
or less of the odorous surface is exposed, a point can be found
where minimum stimulation occurs. The amount of odorous substance
delivered under these circumstances to the air current has been
designated by Zwaardemaker as an olfactie, the unit of olfactory
stimulation. Having determined for a given substance the area
necessary for the delivery of one olfactie, doubling that surface by
an appropriate movement of the inner tube will produce a stimulus of
two olfacties, and so forth. Thus a graded series of measured
olfactory stimuli can easily be obtained. Further, by using outer
tubes carrying different odorous substances various comparisons can
be instituted as measured in olfacties” (Parker).
Instruments more elaborate and of greater accuracy have, as a matter of
fact, been devised and used, but they need not detain us.
The results obtained by these and other methods of determining the
minimum stimulus of olfaction are certainly astonishing, and reveal as
nothing else can the delicate acuteness of the sense.
Fischer and Penzoldt found that they could plainly smell one milligram
of chlorphenol evaporated in a room of 230 cubic metres capacity. This
is equivalent to 1/230,000,000 of a milligram to each cubic centimetre
of air, or, assuming 50 cubic centimetres of air as the minimum needed
for olfaction, the amount of chlorphenol capable of exciting sensation
is 1/4,600,000 of the thousandth part of a gram—approximately
1/276,000,000 of a grain!
Many other odours have been similarly tested, and although there is much
numerical discrepancy in the records made by different observers, all
agree as to the extreme delicacy of the sense. (For vanillin and
mercaptan, see p. 39.)
Those experiments and estimations explain how it comes about that many
odours (musk, for example) may go on giving off their scent until they
part with the whole of it _without undergoing any appreciable loss of
weight_.
Thus there is no chemical test known to us so delicate as olfaction.
It has been found, for example, that over-assiduous efforts at filtering
and purifying the air used for ventilation so as to remove all noxious
chemical and bacterial ingredients defeat their own end. Such air,
although to our artificial tests absolutely clean and pure, seems to the
sense of smell to lack freshness. And the nose is right. The tests are
wrong. For sojourn in such an atmosphere induces lassitude and torpor of
mind, as members of the Houses of Parliament, where this method has been
tried, know to their cost—and ours.
But albeit so highly sensitive to minute traces, the sense occasionally
fails to perceive a highly concentrated odour.
For example, every one is aware that a bunch of violets which is filling
a room with its fragrance seems when held to the nose to have no smell
at all, or at the most to have but a vague, indefinable sort of odour.
The effect, as a matter of fact, varies with the perfume employed. Some,
like violets, have no smell at all. Others give a different smell when
concentrated from what they give when dilute. Muskone, for one, the
essential constituent of musk, has an odour of pines when concentrated;
and storax, a delightful perfume when dilute, is disagreeable when too
powerful, and so on.
It is to be noted that the disagreeable character of these last is not
due to the mental “cloying” or “sickening” of excessive sweetness; it is
a definite odour. Nor is the anosmia for concentrated violets due to the
exhaustion of the sense.
Heyninx, comparing, as we shall see, olfaction with vision, believes the
indefinite odour of concentrated violets to be akin to the absence of
colour in white light. But this explanation seems to me to be
improbable, since the effect is due not to the combination of a number
of odours, as white light is the combination of all the colours of the
spectrum, but to the overpowering influence of a single odour.
Indeed, none of the other senses shows the same phenomenon. If we happen
to catch a momentary glimpse of the noonday sun, we plainly see a disc
of intense light (it is pale blue in colour to my eye), surrounded by a
fiery halo, before it blinds us. In the same way, when a gun is fired
close to the ear, we hear the sound before we are deafened by it.
It is for such reasons that perfumers never sniff at a bottle of scent;
they take a little, rub it on the back of the hand, and then wait until
the spirit has evaporated before they proceed to smell it.
The exquisite delicacy of the sense might lead us to suppose that the
olfactory organ must be quick at responding to its proper stimulus. But
such is not the case. It is, on the other hand, relatively “slow in the
uptake.”
Gleg has estimated that the reaction time for auditory sensation is from
0·12 to 0·15 of a second, whereas the reaction time for smell is as much
as 0·5 of a second, only one sensory stimulus being slower, that of
pain, namely, which occupies 0·9 of a second.
Odours are conveyed to the olfactory end-organ in the air we breathe.
Before they can rise into the air from the odorivector (the odorous
body) and be transported they must, it is clear, pass into the vaporous
or gaseous state. (In the case of fish, of course, the odour must
undergo solution, that is pass into the liquid state.) Many of the
natural properties manifested by smells have been related to this
transformation into vapour.
Everybody knows how rich garden scents become after a shower. It has
been claimed that this results from the lightening of the atmosphere by
the storm, in consequence of which the diffusion of odorous vapours,
following the law that governs the diffusibility of gases, is
facilitated. But some of the effect must be due, one would think, partly
to the impact of the raindrops breaking up and dispersing the halo of
perfumed air that surrounds each flower, and partly also to the
evaporation of the rain-water that has absorbed these floral emanations.
We are told also that during the night and in the chill of early morning
the air is less charged with odours because cold checks the diffusion of
gases. This may be true enough for some odours, but I am inclined to
think that the fact is not stated with perfect accuracy, as there are
certain perfumes, that of the tobacco-plant for one and that of the
night-scented stock for another, which are most prevalent after
nightfall. And it has always seemed to me that Mother Earth is never so
nicely perfumed as on a cool September morning, although I should never
be inclined to call any morning “incense-breathing,” like Gray, for
anything less like incense could scarcely be imagined.
There is no doubt, however, that frost seals up all odorivectors and
renders the air quite odourless.
A physical law appertaining to gases is also invoked to explain the
“clinging” of odours. Many, if not all, solids and liquids when exposed
to air and other gases adsorb (cause to adhere) to their surfaces a
thin, dense layer or film of the gas. If now that gas happens to contain
an odour, or is itself odorous, the odour must also be adsorbed, and so
in the case of porous materials, such as fabrics, permeated by the
odour, it lingers tenaciously in their depths.
Odorous bodies in the solid or powdered form are known to retain their
perfume for prolonged periods. Look how long a sandal-wood box remains
aromatic. This property is supposed to depend upon the lowered vapour
tension of the odorous molecules in the depths of the solid or powder,
in virtue of which they rise into the air, or evaporate, but slowly.
It would seem to be natural to suppose that, as vaporisation plays such
an important part in the dissemination of odours, the volatile bodies
and liquids would be more odorous than the nonvolatile. But, as
Zwaardemaker has pointed out, this is by no means always the case. Many
substances of low volatility are nevertheless highly odorous, and _vice
versâ_.
We turn now for a moment to consider the behaviour of the odorous vapour
in the nose.
As it passes through the nose the current of inspired air sweeps along
the lower and middle regions only; the upper or olfactory region is not
directly traversed. But almost certainly some of the air is diverted up
into the olfactory region in light eddies, and the act of sniffing,
which is a short inspiration abruptly begun and ended, and which we
instinctively resort to when trying to detect a faint odour, is
obviously of a nature to propel side-streams or eddies up into the
olfactory zone. One is reminded of the production of smoke rings from a
box.
We smell not only during inspiration, however, but also during
expiration, the latter conveying to the olfactory region the flavours of
food and drink.
Flavours, that is to say the olfactory elements of so-called “taste,”
are not appreciated to the full until after deglutition. To most of us,
although experts and connoisseurs can determine it by smelling the wine
in the glass, the bouquet of port has really no meaning until after it
is drunk, simply because the expiratory current of air as it ascends
through the throat into the nose receives the concentrated vapours of
the warmed volatile higher alcohols which are clinging about the fauces.
We may here remark that although we are usually able to perceive that
the odour and the flavour of a sapid food or drink are akin to each
other, the sensation of the odour anticipating that of the flavour, yet
they are by no means always identical. They may strike us as do a plain
and a coloured version of the same print. Sometimes the flavour seems to
be the more powerful, sometimes the odour. Nearly all bouillons, for
example, possess a flavour more rich and full than the odour they give
off with their steam. On the other hand, valerian has a strong,
objectionable smell, which, strange to say, becomes subdued and
relatively tolerable when that medicine is being swallowed.
It is a curious fact, well known to expert “tasters,” that if the eyes
are kept closed during the test, the delicacy of appreciation of
flavours, and also of the smell of the wine in the glass, is entirely
lost. I cannot suggest any explanation for this curious phenomenon.
Anosmia, absence of smell, which is the next topic for our
consideration, is a not uncommon defect. It is generally the result of
some form of nasal obstruction, such as a bad “cold in the head,” as
Æsop’s fox was clever enough to remember. This type is temporary and
remediable. But there are other forms that are due to nerve-disease, and
for these nothing can be done.
A congenital anosmia is occasionally met with, and a curious partial
anosmia, reminding us of colour-blindness or tone-deafness. I myself
know people who cannot smell coal-gas unless it is very strong, and I
once knew a cook,—a cook who couldn’t smell a bad egg!
Albinos are said to be congenitally anosmic, and there was recorded many
years ago by Hutchison the case of a negro who, gradually losing all his
pigment, became anosmic in consequence (cited by Ogle). As the
sustentacular cells of the olfactory area contain granules of pigment
(see Chapter II.), we are forced to conclude that it must exercise a
highly important function in the perception of odours. We shall see
later on that its presence is supposed by some to support the theory
that odour is a specific ethereal vibration similar to light.
We turn now to discuss the real nature of odour, a section of our
subject which is still theoretical and highly problematical.
Having accomplished so much in the art of perfumery, the chemist ought,
one would think, to be able to tell us whether or not there is any
relationship or correspondence between odour and chemical constitution.
When investigation of this point was begun, a hopeful fact came to
light, as it was pointed out that certain bodies of similar chemical
composition had all the same kind of smell. These were the compounds of
arsenic, bismuth, and phosphorus, all of which smell of garlic. But it
was soon realised that this fact was of little or no significance, as
the oxides of many of the metals, although quite different from the
former group, also smell of garlic. To these we may add the instance of
water and sulphuretted hydrogen, two substances which are related
chemically, as their formulæ show (H_{2}O and H_{2}S), and yet one of
them is odourless, While the other has a strong, unpleasant smell.
Finally, according to Deite, natural and artificial musk have nothing in
common but their smell. Chemically they are quite different.
The property of odour, then, does not depend upon the Chemical
constitution of bodies.
The next question that arises is: Do bodies exhaling the same kind of
odour resemble each other in the structure of their molecules? In other
words, can odour be related to molecular structure?
To the chemist all matter is made up of atoms and molecules. The
elements, bodies which cannot be broken up by chemical action into any
simpler form, are composed of atoms. On the other hand, when elements
combine to form a compound, the unit of the new body, composed as it is
of two or more atoms of different elements linked together, is known as
a molecule. (Probably the elements also exist in the molecular state,
the atoms of which they are composed being linked together in groups.)
Both atoms and molecules are, of course, very minute in size.
For reasons we need not enter into here, the molecule is held to have a
certain structural form, which form is indicated by what is known as a
graphic formula. The graphic formula of water, one of the simplest, may
be written as H—O—H, and we may regard it as having a linear form.
(Modern views indicate that it is not a simple line, but in two planes.)