Body odor

“ There is an odor in this insensible perspiration, which becomes offensive when the impurities collecting upon the surface of the skin are not frequently removed. The entire surface of the body should be washed every day ”

“ Need of bathing.—When the perspiration dries from the skin, it leaves the waste and poisons behind. We cannot always see the dried matters, but they always have an unpleasant odor. We [Pg 79] should bathe often enough to keep our body from having an unpleasant smell. We should wash the whole body with soap and hot water at least once a week in winter and more often than that in summer. ”

“ These nerves belong to the system which controls the smooth muscles and glands; when the nerves become active the sweat glands are also active, and there is rapid filtration of water and inorganic salts from the blood into the sweat glands and out to the outside of the body. Small amounts of organic materials come out also in the sweat, and these are responsible for its characteristic odor. They evidently differ in different people, since all dogs and some persons are able to recognize individuals by their odor, and body odor is largely the odor of sweat. ”

“ An odor that is excessively disagreeable at first presently no longer troubles us. If it were not for this, it would be almost, if not quite, impossible to obtain laborers in those industries where the odor is necessarily bad. There is, however, a source of danger in this quick subsidence of smell perception. About our only method of judging offhand as to the ventilation of a room is by the smell, and this fails as a guide when we have been in the room for a time. ”

“ The Sense of Smell in Neurasthenic and Allied States. In Certain Poets and Novelists. Olfactory Fetichism. The Part Played by Olfaction in Normal Sexual Attraction. In the East, etc. In Modern Europe. The Odor of the Armpit and its Variations. As a Sexual and General Stimulant. Body Odors in Civilization Tend to Cause Sexual Antipathy unless some Degree of Tumescence is Already Present. The Question whether Men or Women are more Liable to Feel Olfactory Influences. Women Usually more Attentive to Odors. The Special Interest in Odors Felt by Sexual Inverts.
IV.
The Influence of Perfumes. ”

“ If we wish to get more of the odor we do it by sniffing, which is changing the shape of the nostrils to throw the air current more directly against the smell organs.
These organs are amazingly sensitive. It is hard to appreciate the minuteness of the amounts of material that can be smelled. ”

“ It has thus happened that when personal odor acts as a sexual allurement it is the armpit, in any case normally the chief focus of odor in the body, which mainly comes into play, together with the skin and the hair. ”

“ Odors from other parts of the body should be conspicuous by their absence. Normally no artificial aids are needed. Frequent bathing and general cleanliness are alone sufficient. The natural feminine odor—odor feminae—is pleasant, attractive and needs no disguise. But where an unpleasant odor from the genitals, feet or armpits is present the proper treatment should be applied, and in such cases the use [349] of a delicate perfume, sachet or scented talcum powder, is quite permissible. ”

“ The recorded cases are very numerous in which human persons have exhaled from their skins—sometimes in a very pronounced degree—the odors of plants and flowers, of violets, of roses, of pineapple, of vanilla. On the other hand, there are various plant odors which distinctly recall, not merely the general odor of the human body, but even the specifically sexual odors. ”

“ In addition to the carbonic acid gas other deleterious exhalations of the human body poison crowded rooms, and are especially the cause of the peculiarly offensive and stuffy odor at which healthy olfactories revolt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The reality and subtlety of the influence of odors is further shown, by the cases in which very intense effects are produced even by the temporary inhalation of flowers or perfumes or other odors. Such cases of idiosyncrasy in which a person—frequently of somewhat neurotic temperament—becomes acutely sensitive to some odor or odors have been recorded in medical literature for many centuries. In these cases the obnoxious odor produces congestion of the respiratory passages, sneezing, headache, fainting, etc., but occasionally, it has been recorded, even death. ”

“ To have the sense of smell or any other sense, requires no language. An odor can be perceived by a child as well as by a grown person. To every disease there is an odor, [mental atmosphere] and every one is affected by it when it comes within his consciousness. Every one knows that he can produce in himself heat or cold by excitement. ”

“ What relation is there between the real world and that image of the world shadowed in our soul? In the special case we are concerned with, what is it in these substances which is the cause why they affect our sense of smell? It seems certain, in the first place, that odor in itself, so far as it is odor, is a mere figment of our mind. Contemporaneous physiology proves that excitement of the nerves of sensation is followed, in each one, by the sensation that corresponds with each. ”

“ Smell, like taste, aids us in the choice of proper food, leading us to reject such articles as have a rank or putrid odor, and which are, as a rule, unfit to be eaten. The highest usefulness of this sense, however, consists in the protection it affords to the organs of respiration. Stationed at the gateways of the air-passages, it examines the current of air as it enters, and warns us of the presence of noxious gases, and of other and generally invisible enemies to health. Not all dangerous vapors are offensive, but almost all offensive vapors are unfit to be breathed. ”

“ This sense not only comes in to the aid of taste in enabling man and the lower animals to select proper food, and avoid that which is injurious, but it also gives us positive and varied pleasure by the inhalation of agreeable odors, while, at the same time, it enables us to avoid an infectious atmosphere, and all objects whose odors are offensive and hurtful.
It is true that man can accustom himself to nearly all kinds of odor, even to those that at first are very disagreeable. ”

“ I have already observed the powerful effects which some odours have upon the nervous system. There are some which agreeably excite it, and produce a pleasant and active state of the mind, while others, on the contrary, produce the most terrible convulsions, and even fainting. Those particular antipathies with respect to smells, arise sometimes from something in the original constitution of the body, with which we are unacquainted, but generally from the senses having been powerfully and unpleasantly affected by certain odours at an early period of life. ”

“ Human Odors.—Curious as it may seem, each individual as well as each species is in life enveloped with an odor peculiarly its own, due to its exhaled breath, its excretions, and principally to its insensible perspiration. The faculty of recognizing an odor in different individuals, although more developed in savage tribes, is by no means unknown in civilized society. Fournier quotes the instance of a young man who, like a dog, could smell the enemy by scent, and who by smell alone recognized his own wife from other persons. ”

“ I think “hot rolls,” because my organ of smell—the nose—has received a stimulus which it transmits along my olfactory nerves to the brain; and there the odor is given a name—“hot rolls.” The recognition of the stimulus as an odor and of that odor as “hot rolls” is consciousness in the form of thinking. But the odor arouses desire to eat—hunger; and this is consciousness in the form of feeling. The something which makes me walk into the shop and buy the rolls is consciousness in the form of willing. The sensory appeal from the outside world gained admission through the sense of smell ”

“ Complexion.—Pare states that persons of red hair and freckled complexion have a noxious exhalation; the odor of prussic acid is said to come from dark individuals, while blondes exhale a secretion resembling musk. Fat persons frequently have an oleaginous smell.
The disorders of the nervous system are said to be associated with peculiar odors. Fevre says the odor of the sweat of lunatics resembles that of yellow deer or mice, and Knight remarks that the absence of this symptom would enable him to tell whether insanity was feigned or not. ”

“ The sense of smell is high up in the nose. It is a very useful sense and warns us of danger. We can often detect bad air by its odor. We know whether food is good or whether it is spoiled, by its smell. ”

“ So by experience all animals learned to keep clear of each other by the peculiar faculty of smell. As they associated sight with the odor, then when the odor came in contact with their other senses they would create the thing contained in the odor. If it was an odor from some living thing that they were afraid of they would fly or run until they were free from their enemy. ”

“ As a noxious gas blights a delicate plant, so will a strong bad odor blight the delicate plant of love. Yes, a strong malodorous whiff will cool the most ardent passion. The public would be astounded if it knew how many cases of separation and divorce are due to nothing else but a bad odor from the mouth. Therefore, if you happen to suffer from this unfortunate ailment, lose no time in applying to a competent physician, and do not tire of treating yourself, no matter how irksome and time-consuming the treatment may be, until you are completely cured. ”

“ For the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, of taste, of smell, of touch—all these are discriminative faculties, their purpose being to separate the beneficial from whatever causeth harm. Now, is it possible that man’s sense of smell, the sense that differentiates odours, should find some odour repugnant, and that odour be beneficial to the human body? ”

“ It a way, odors might be treated as pertaining to the same class of deleterious substances as dust, but they have a property not possessed by ordinary dust of affecting the organs of smell.
Odors vary greatly in character and have great effect upon the nervous organism of the human body. Many odors are, extremely pleasant, and some have an exhilarating effect, while other odors are extremely unpleasant and have exactly the reverse effect. Unfortunately, all people are not agreed as to the character of odors. Gases that smell pleasant to some people are extremely unpleasant to others. ”

“ That they must be connected with the respiratory apparatus would seem, judging by analogy, to be indisputable, for, so far as we know, an odor cannot be appreciated unless the air containing it be allowed to pass more or less rapidly over the olfactory nerves. ”

“ Every one must have experienced the sickening and disgusting odor upon going into such a room, though its occupants themselves do not recognize it. The nose, although an organ of excessive sensibility, and capable of perceiving the presence of offensive matters where the most delicate chemical tests fail, is nevertheless easily blunted, and what at the first impression is pre-eminently disgusting, quickly becomes less offensive to the smell ”

“ Continent young men have been said by many ancient writers to smell more strongly than the unchaste, and some writers have described as "seminal odor"—an odor resembling that of animals in heat, faintly recalling that of the he-goat, according to Venturi—the exhalations of the skin at such times.
During sexual excitement, as women can testify, a man very frequently, if not normally, gives out an odor which, as usually described, proceeds from the skin, the breath, or both. ”

“ Causes.—It is usually seen in people who are very much debilitated, in young factory girls, and sometimes in healthy boys. Retained secretions in the nose, usually cause the odor. These decompose and ferment. The nose is large and roomy, the nostrils are filled with scabby secretions; hard masses are formed which sometimes fill the nostril.
PHYSICIANS' TREATMENT.—The first few weeks, cleansing the nose with peroxide of hydrogen will stop the odor. First, remove the scabs with forceps and then wash and cleanse the nose with the peroxide solution. ”

“ As an illustration, the odor of cooking may be pleasant to some, whereas to others it may be extremely unpleasant. Odors are not necessarily harmful, and generally speaking they do good rather than harm. Odors are produced by a great variety of substances, and, as stated above, vary in quality from the most disagreeable nature, which is almost sufficient to cause sickness, to the most pleasant and delightful nature such as characterize our most expensive perfumes. A great majority of the disagreeable odors in chemical composition are complicated compounds of carbon and hydrogen. ”

“ The sense of odor gives us information as to the quality of food and drink, and more especially as to the quality of the air we breathe. Taste is at the gateway of the alimentary canal, while smell acts as the sentinel of the respiratory tract. Just as taste and flavor influence nutrition by affecting the digestive process, so the agreeable odors about us, even those of the perfumes, play an important part in the economy of life. ”