Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4

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Title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4

Author: Havelock Ellis

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Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX, VOLUME 4 ***

STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX, VOLUME IV

Sexual Selection In Man
I. Touch. Ii. Smell. Iii. Hearing. Iv. Vision.

HAVELOCK ELLIS

1927

PREFACE.

As in many other of these _Studies_, and perhaps more than in most, the
task attempted in the present volume is mainly of a tentative and
preliminary character. There is here little scope yet for the presentation
of definite scientific results. However it may be in the physical
universe, in the cosmos of science our knowledge must be nebulous before
it constellates into definitely measurable shapes, and nothing is gained
by attempting to anticipate the evolutionary process. Thus it is that
here, for the most part, we have to content ourselves at present with the
task of mapping out the field in broad and general outlines, bringing
together the facts and considerations which indicate the direction in
which more extended and precise results will in the future be probably
found.

In his famous _Descent of Man_, wherein he first set forth the doctrine of
sexual selection, Darwin injured an essentially sound principle by
introducing into it a psychological confusion whereby the physiological
sensory stimuli through which sexual selection operates were regarded as
equivalent to æsthetic preferences. This confusion misled many, and it is
only within recent years (as has been set forth in the "Analysis of the
Sexual Impulse" in the previous volume of these _Studies_) that the
investigations and criticisms of numerous workers have placed the doctrine
of sexual selection on a firm basis by eliminating its hazardous æsthetic
element. Love springs up as a response to a number of stimuli to
tumescence, the object that most adequately arouses tumescence being that
which evokes love; the question of æsthetic beauty, although it develops
on this basis, is not itself fundamental and need not even be consciously
present at all. When we look at these phenomena in their broadest
biological aspects, love is only to a limited extent a response to beauty;
to a greater extent beauty is simply a name for the complexus of stimuli
which most adequately arouses love. If we analyze these stimuli to
tumescence as they proceed from a person of the opposite sex we find that
they are all appeals which must come through the channels of four senses:
touch, smell, hearing, and, above all, vision. When a man or a woman
experiences sexual love for one particular person from among the multitude
by which he or she is surrounded, this is due to the influences of a group
of stimuli coming through the channels of one or more of these senses.
There has been a sexual selection conditioned by sensory stimuli. This is
true even of the finer and more spiritual influences that proceed from one
person to another, although, in order to grasp the phenomena adequately,
it is best to insist on the more fundamental and less complex forms which
they assume. In this sense sexual selection is no longer a hypothesis
concerning the truth of which it is possible to dispute; it is a
self-evident fact. The difficulty is not as to its existence, but as to
the methods by which it may be most precisely measured. It is
fundamentally a psychological process, and should be approached from the
psychological side. This is the reason for dealing with it here. Obscure
as the psychological aspects of sexual selection still remain, they are
full of fascination, for they reveal to us the more intimate sides of
human evolution, of the process whereby man is molded into the shapes we
know.

HAVELOCK ELLIS.

Carbis Water,

Lelant, Cornwall, England.

CONTENTS.

SEXUAL SELECTION IN MAN.

The External Sensory Stimuli Affecting Selection in Man. The Four Senses
Involved.

TOUCH.

The Primitive Character of the Skin. Its Qualities. Touch the Earliest
Source of Sensory Pleasure. The Characteristics of Touch. As the Alpha and
Omega of Affection. The Sexual Organs a Special Adaptation of Touch.
Sexual Attraction as Originated by Touch. Sexual Hyperæsthesia to Touch.
The Sexual Associations of Acne.

II.

Ticklishness. Its Origin and Significance. The Psychology of Tickling.
Laughter. Laughter as a Kind of Detumescence. The Sexual Relationships of
Itching. The Pleasure of Tickling. Its Decrease with Age and Sexual
Activity.

III.

The Secondary Sexual Skin Centres. Orificial Contacts. Cunnilingus and
Fellatio. The Kiss. The Nipples. The Sympathy of the Breasts with the
Primary Sexual Centres. This Connection Operative both through the Nerves
and through the Blood. The Influence of Lactation on the Sexual Centres.
Suckling and Sexual Emotion. The Significance of the Association between
Suckling and Sexual Emotion. The Association as a Cause of Sexual
Perversity.

IV.

The Bath. Antagonism of Primitive Christianity to the Cult of the Skin.
Its Cult of Personal Filth. The Reasons which Justified this Attitude. The
World-wide Tendency to Association between Extreme Cleanliness and Sexual
Licentiousness. The Immorality Associated with Public Baths in Europe down
to Modern Times.

Summary. Fundamental Importance of Touch. The Skin the Mother of All the
Other Senses.

SMELL.

The Primitiveness of Smell. The Anatomical Seat of the Olfactory Centres.
Predominance of Smell among the Lower Mammals. Its Diminished Importance
in Man. The Attention Paid to Odors by Savages.

II.

Rise of the Study of Olfaction. Cloquet. Zwaardemaker. The Theory of
Smell. The Classification of Odors. The Special Characteristics of
Olfactory Sensation in Man. Smell as the Sense of Imagination. Odors as
Nervous Stimulants. Vasomotor and Muscular Effects. Odorous Substances as
Drugs.

III.

The Specific Body Odors of Various Peoples. The Negro, etc. The European.
The Ability to Distinguish Individuals by Smell. The Odor of Sanctity. The
Odor of Death. The Odors of Different Parts of the Body. The Appearance of
Specific Odors at Puberty. The Odors of Sexual Excitement. The Odors of
Menstruation. Body Odors as a Secondary Sexual Character. The Custom of
Salutation by Smell. The Kiss. Sexual Selection by Smell. The Alleged
Association between Size of Nose and Sexual Vigor. The Probably Intimate
Relationship between the Olfactory and Genital Spheres. Reflex Influences
from the Nose. Reflex Influences from the Genital Sphere. Olfactory
Hallucinations in Insanity as Related to Sexual States. The Olfactive
Type. 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. Their Aboriginal Relationship to Sexual Body
Odors. This True even of the Fragrance of Flowers. The Synthetic
Manufacture of Perfumes. The Sexual Effects of Perfumes. Perfumes perhaps
Originally Used to Heighten the Body Odors. The Special Significance of
the Musk Odor. Its Wide Natural Diffusion in Plants and Animals and Man.
Musk a Powerful Stimulant. Its Widespread Use as a Perfume. Peau
d'Espagne. The Smell of Leather and its Occasional Sexual Effects. The
Sexual Influence of the Odors of Flowers. The Identity of many Plant Odors
with Certain Normal and Abnormal Body Odors. The Smell of Semen in this
Connection.

The Evil Effects of Excessive Olfactory Stimulation. The Symptoms of
Vanillism. The Occasional Dangerous Results of the Odors of Flowers.
Effects of Flowers on the Voice.

VI.

The Place of Smell in Human Sexual Selections. It has given Place to the
Predominance of Vision largely because in Civilized Man it Fails to Act at
a Distance. It still Plays a Part by Contributing to the Sympathies or the
Antipathies of Intimate Contact.

HEARING

The Physiological Basis of Rhythm. Rhythm as a Physiological Stimulus. The
Intimate Relation of Rhythm to Movement. The Physiological Influence of
Music on Muscular Action, Circulation, Respiration, etc. The Place of
Music in Sexual Selection among the Lower Animals. Its Comparatively Small
Place in Courtship among Mammals. The Larynx and Voice in Man. The
Significance of the Pubertal Changes. Ancient Beliefs Concerning the
Influence of Music in Morals, Education and Medicine. Its Therapeutic
Uses. Significance of the Romantic Interest in Music at Puberty. Men
Comparatively Insusceptible to the Specifically Sexual Influence of Music.
Rarity of Sexual Perversions on the Basis of the Sense of Hearing. The
Part of Music in Primitive Human Courtship. Women Notably Susceptible to
the Specifically Sexual Influence of Music and the Voice.

II.

Summary. Why the Influence of Music in Human Sexual Selection is
Comparatively Small.

VISION.

Primacy of Vision in Man. Beauty as a Sexual Allurement. The Objective
Element in Beauty. Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Various Parts of the
World. Savage Women sometimes Beautiful from European Point of View.
Savages often Admire European Beauty. The Appeal of Beauty to some Extent
Common even to Animals and Man.

II.

Beauty to Some Extent Consists Primitively in an Exaggeration of the
Sexual Characters. The Sexual Organs. Mutilations, Adornments, and
Garments. Sexual Allurement the Original Object of Such Devices. The
Religious Element. Unæsthetic Character of the Sexual Organs. Importance
of the Secondary Sexual Characters. The Pelvis and Hips. Steatopygia.
Obesity. Gait. The Pregnant Woman as a Mediæval Type of Beauty. The Ideals
of the Renaissance. The Breasts. The Corset. Its Object. Its History.
Hair. The Beard. The Element of National or Racial Type in Beauty. The
Relative Beauty of Blondes and Brunettes. The General European Admiration
for Blondes. The Individual Factors in the Constitution of the Idea of
Beauty. The Love of the Exotic.

III.

Beauty Not the Sole Element in the Sexual Appeal of Vision. Movement. The
Mirror. Narcissism. Pygmalionism. Mixoscopy. The Indifference of Women to
Male Beauty. The Significance of Woman's Admiration of Strength. The
Spectacle of Strength is a Tactile Quality made Visible.

IV.

The Alleged Charm of Disparity in Sexual Attraction. The Admiration for
High Stature. The Admiration for Dark Pigmentation. The Charm of Parity.
Conjugal Mating. The Statistical Results of Observation as Regards General
Appearance, Stature, and Pigmentation of Married Couples. Preferential
Mating and Assortative Mating. The Nature of the Advantage Attained by the
Fair in Sexual Selection. The Abhorrence of Incest and the Theories of its
Cause. The Explanation in Reality Simple. The Abhorrence of Incest in
Relation to Sexual Selection. The Limits to the Charm of Parity in
Conjugal Mating. The Charm of Disparity in Secondary Sexual Characters.

Summary of the Conclusions at Present Attainable in Regard to the Nature
of Beauty and its Relation to Sexual Selection.

APPENDIX A.

The Origins of the Kiss.

APPENDIX B.

Histories of Sexual Development.

SEXUAL SELECTION IN MAN.

The External Sensory Stimuli Affecting Selection in Man--The Four Senses
Involved.

Tumescence--the process by which the organism is brought into the physical
and psychic state necessary to insure conjugation and detumescence--to
some extent comes about through the spontaneous action of internal forces.
To that extent it is analogous to the physical and psychic changes which
accompany the gradual filling of the bladder and precede its evacuation.
But even among animals who are by no means high in the zoölogical scale
the process is more complicated than this. External stimuli act at every
stage, arousing or heightening the process of tumescence, and in normal
human beings it may be said that the process is never completed without
the aid of such stimuli, for even in the auto-erotic sphere external
stimuli are still active, either actually or in imagination.

The chief stimuli which influence tumescence and thus direct sexual choice
come chiefly--indeed, exclusively--through the four senses of touch,
smell, hearing, and sight. All the phenomena of sexual selection, so far
as they are based externally, act through these four senses.[1] The
reality of the influence thus exerted may be demonstrated statistically
even in civilized man, and it has been shown that, as regards, for
instance, eye-color, conjugal partners differ sensibly from the unmarried
persons by whom they are surrounded. When, therefore, we are exploring the
nature of the influence which stimuli, acting through the sensory
channels, exert on the strength and direction of the sexual impulse, we
are intimately concerned with the process by which the actual form and
color, not alone of living things generally, but of our own species, have
been shaped and are still being shaped. At the same time, it is probable,
we are exploring the mystery which underlies all the subtle appreciations,
all the emotional undertones, which are woven in the web of the whole
world as it appeals to us through those sensory passages by which alone it
can reach us. We are here approaching, therefore, a fundamental subject of
unsurpassable importance, a subject which has not yet been accurately
explored save at a few isolated points and one which it is therefore
impossible to deal with fully and adequately. Yet it cannot be passed
over, for it enters into the whole psychology of the sexual instinct.

Of the four senses--touch, smell, hearing, and sight--with which we are
here concerned, touch is the most primitive, and it may be said to be the
most important, though it is usually the last to make its appeal felt.
Smell, which occupies the chief place among many animals, is of
comparatively less importance, though of considerable interest, in man; it
is only less intimate and final than touch. Sight occupies an intermediate
position, and on this account, and also on account of the very great part
played by vision in life generally as well as in art, it is the most
important of all the senses from the human sexual point of view. Hearing,
from the same point of view, is the most remote of all the senses in its
appeal to the sexual impulse, and on that account it is, when it
intervenes, among the first to make its influence felt.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Taste must, I believe, be excluded, for if we abstract the parts of
touch and smell, even in those abnormal sexual acts in which it may seem
to be affected, taste could scarcely have any influence. Most of our
"tasting," as Waller puts it, is done by the nose, which, in man, is in
specially close relationship, posteriorly, with the mouth. There are at
most four taste sensations--sweet, bitter, salt, and sour--if even all of
these are simple tastes. What commonly pass for taste sensations, as shown
by some experiments of G.T.W. Patrick (_Psychological Review_, 1898, p.
160), are the composite results of the mingling of sensations of smell,
touch, temperature, sight, and taste.

TOUCH.

The Primitive Character of the Skin--Its Qualities--Touch the Earliest
Source of Sensory Pleasure--The Characteristics of Touch--As the Alpha and
Omega of Affection--The Sexual Organs a Special Adaptation of
Touch--Sexual Attraction as Originated by Touch--Sexual Hyperæsthesia to
Touch--The Sexual Associations of Acne.

We are accustomed to regard the skin as mainly owing its existence to the
need for the protection of the delicate vessels, nerves, viscera, and
muscles underneath. Undoubtedly it performs, and by its tough and elastic
texture is well fitted to perform, this extremely important service. But
the skin is not merely a method of protection against the external world;
it is also a method of bringing us into sensitive contact with the
external world. It is thus, as the organ of touch, the seat of the most
widely diffused sense we possess, and, moreover, the sense which is the
most ancient and fundamental of all--the mother of the other senses.

It is scarcely necessary to insist that the primitive nature of the
sensory function of the skin with the derivative nature of the other
senses, is a well ascertained and demonstrable fact. The lower we descend
in the animal scale, the more varied we find the functions of the skin to
be, and if in the higher animals much of the complexity has disappeared,
that is only because the specialization of the various skin regions into
distinct organs has rendered this complexity unnecessary. Even yet,
however, in man himself the skin still retains, in a more or less latent
condition, much of its varied and primary power, and the analysis of
pathological and even normal phenomena serves to bring these old powers
into clear light.

Woods Hutchinson (_Studies in Human and Comparative Pathology_,
1901, Chapters VII and VIII) has admirably set forth the immense
importance of the skin, as in the first place "a tissue which is
silk to the touch, the most exquisitely beautiful surface in the
universe to the eye, and yet a wall of adamant against hostile
attack. Impervious alike, by virtue of its wonderful responsive
vitality, to moisture and drought, cold and heat, electrical
changes, hostile bacteria, the most virulent of poisons and the
deadliest of gases, it is one of the real Wonders of the World.
More beautiful than velvet, softer and more pliable than silk,
more impervious than rubber, and more durable under exposure than
steel, well-nigh as resistant to electric currents as glass, it
is one of the toughest and most dangerproof substances in the
three kingdoms of nature" (although, as this author adds, we
"hardly dare permit it to see the sunlight or breathe the open
air"). But it is more than this. It is, as Woods Hutchinson
expresses it, the creator of the entire body; its embryonic
infoldings form the alimentary canal, the brain, the spinal cord,
while every sense is but a specialization of its general organic
activity. It is furthermore a kind of "skin-heart," promoting the
circulation by its own energy; it is the great heat-regulating
organ of the body; it is an excretory organ only second to the
kidneys, which descend from it, and finally it still remains the
seat of touch.

It may be added that the extreme beauty of the skin as a surface
is very clearly brought out by the inadequacy of the comparisons
commonly used in order to express its beauty. Snow, marble,
alabaster, ivory, milk, cream, silk, velvet, and all the other
conventional similes furnish surfaces which from any point of
view are incomparably inferior to the skin itself. (Cf. Stratz,
_Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers_, Chapter XII.)

With reference to the extraordinary vitality of the skin,
emphasized by Woods Hutchinson, it may be added that, when
experimenting on the skin with the electric current, Waller found
that healthy skin showed signs of life ten days or more after
excision. It has been found also that fragments of skin which
have been preserved in sterile fluid for even as long as nine
months may still be successfully transplanted on to the body.
(_British Medical Journal_, July 19, 1902.)

Everything indicates, remark Stanley Hall and Donaldson ("Motor
Sensations in the Skin," _Mind_, 1885), that the skin is "not
only the primeval and most reliable source of our knowledge of
the external world or the archæological field of psychology," but
a field in which work may shed light on some of the most
fundamental problems of psychic action. Groos (_Spiele der
Menschen_, pp. 8-16) also deals with the primitive character of
touch sensations.

Touch sensations are without doubt the first of all the sensory
impressions to prove pleasurable. We should, indeed, expect this
from the fact that the skin reflexes have already appeared before
birth, while a pleasurable sensitiveness of the lips is doubtless
a factor in the child's response to the contact of the maternal
nipple. Very early memories of sensory pleasure seem to be
frequently, perhaps most frequently, tactile in character, though
this fact is often disguised in recollection, owing to tactile
impression being vague and diffused; there is thus in Elizabeth
Potwin's "Study of Early Memories" (_Psychological Review_,
November, 1901) no separate group of tactile memories, and the
more elaborate investigation by Colegrove ("Individual Memories,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, January, 1899) yields no
decisive results under this head. See, however, Stanley Hall's
valuable study, "Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, April, 1898. Külpe has a
discussion of the psychology of cutaneous sensations (_Outlines
of Psychology_ [English translation], pp. 87 et seq.)

Harriet Martineau, at the beginning of her _Autobiography_,
referring to the vivid character of tactile sensations in early
childhood, remarks, concerning an early memory of touching a
velvet button, that "the rapture of the sensation was really
monstrous." And a lady tells me that one of her earliest memories
at the age of 3 is of the exquisite sensation of the casual
contact of a cool stone with the vulva in the act of urinating.
Such sensations, of course, cannot be termed specifically sexual,
though they help to furnish the tactile basis on which the
specifically sexual sensations develop.

The elementary sensitiveness of the skin is shown by the fact
that moderate excitation suffices to raise the temperature, while
Heidenhain and others have shown that in animals cutaneous
stimuli modify the sensibility of the brain cortex, slight
stimulus increasing excitability and strong stimulus diminishing
it. Féré has shown that the slight stimulus to the skin furnished
by placing a piece of metal on the arm or elsewhere suffices to
increase the output of work with the ergograph. (Féré, _Comptes
Rendus Société de Biologie_, July 12, 1902; id., _Pathologic des
Emotions_, pp. 40 et seq.)

Féré found that the application of a mustard plaster to the skin,
or an icebag, or a hot-water bottle, or even a light touch with a
painter's brush, all exerted a powerful effect in increasing
muscular work with the ergograph. "The tonic effect of cutaneous
excitation," he remarks, "throws light on the psychology of the
caress. It is always the most sensitive parts of the body which
seek to give or to receive caresses. Many animals rub or lick
each other. The mucous surfaces share in this irritability of the
skin. The kiss is not only an expression of feeling; it is a
means of provoking it. Cataglottism is by no means confined to
pigeons. The tonic value of cutaneous stimulation is indeed a
commonly accepted idea. Wrestlers rub their hands or limbs, and
the hand-shake also is not without its physiological basis.

"Cutaneous excitations may cause painful sensations to cease. Many
massage practices which favor work act chiefly as sensorial
stimulants; on this account many nervous persons cannot abandon
them, and the Greeks and Romans found in massage not only health,
but pleasure. Lauder Brunton regards many common manoeuvres, like
scratching the head and pulling the mustache, as methods of
dilating the bloodvessels of the brain by stimulating the facial
nerve. The motor reactions of cutaneous excitations favor this
hypothesis." (Féré, _Travail et Plaisir_, Chapter XV, "Influence
des Excitations du Toucher sur le Travail.")

The main characteristics of the primitive sense of touch are its wide
diffusion over the whole body and the massive vagueness and imprecision of
the messages it sends to the brain. This is the reason, why it is, of all
the senses, the least intellectual and the least æsthetic; it is also the
reason why it is, of all the senses, the most-profoundly emotional.
"Touch," wrote Bain in his _Emotions and Will_, "is both the alpha and the
omega of affection," and he insisted on the special significance in this
connection of "tenderness"--a characteristic emotional quality of
affection which is directly founded on sensations of touch. If tenderness
is the alpha of affection, even between the sexes, its omega is to be
found in the sexual embrace, which may be said to be a method of
obtaining, through a specialized organization of the skin, the most
exquisite and intense sensations of touch.

"We believe nothing is so exciting to the instinct or mere
passions as the presence of the hand or those tactile caresses
which mark affection," states the anonymous author of an article
on "Woman in her Psychological Relations," in the _Journal of
Psychological Medicine_, 1851. "They are the most general stimuli
in lower animals. The first recourse in difficulty or danger, and
the primary solace in anguish, for woman is the bosom of her
husband or her lover. She seeks solace and protection and repose
on that part of the body where she herself places the objects of
her own affection. Woman appears to have the same instinctive
impulse in this respect all over the world."

It is because the sexual orgasm is founded on a special adaptation and
intensification of touch sensations that the sense of touch generally is
to be regarded as occupying the very first place in reference to the
sexual emotions. Féré, Mantegazza, Penta, and most other writers on this
question are here agreed. Touch sensations constitute a vast gamut for the
expression of affection, with at one end the note of minimum personal
affection in the brief and limited touch involved by the conventional
hand-shake and the conventional kiss, and at the other end the final and
intimate contact in which passion finds the supreme satisfaction of its
most profound desire. The intermediate region has its great significance
for us because it offers a field in which affection has its full scope,
but in which every road may possibly lead to the goal of sexual love. It
is the intimacy of touch contacts, their inevitable approach to the
threshold of sexual emotion, which leads to a jealous and instinctive
parsimony in the contact of skin and skin and to the tendency with the
increased sensitiveness of the nervous system involved by civilization to
restrain even the conventional touch manifestation of ordinary affection
and esteem. In China fathers leave off kissing their daughters while they
are still young children. In England the kiss as an ordinary greeting
between men and women--a custom inherited from classic and early Christian
antiquity--still persisted to the beginning of the eighteenth century. In
France the same custom existed in the seventeenth century, but in the
middle of that century was beginning to be regarded as dangerous,[2] while
at the present time the conventional kiss on the cheek is strictly
differentiated from the kiss on the mouth, which is reserved for lovers.
Touch contacts between person and person, other than those limited and
defined by custom, tend to become either unpleasant--as an undesired
intrusion into an intimate sphere--or else, when occurring between man and
woman at some peculiar moment, they may make a powerful reverberation in
the emotional and more specifically sexual sphere. One man falls in love
with his future wife because he has to carry her upstairs with a sprained
ankle. Another dates his love-story from a romp in which his cheek
accidentally came in contact with that of his future wife. A woman will
sometimes instinctively strive to attract the attention of the man who
appeals to her by a peculiar and prolonged pressure of the hand--the only
touch contact permitted to her. Dante, as Penta has remarked, refers to
"sight or touch" as the two channels through which a woman's love is
revived (_Purgatorio_, VIII, 76). Even the hand-shake of a sympathetic man
is enough in some chaste and sensitive women to produce sexual excitement
or sometimes even the orgasm. The cases in which love arises from the
influence of stimuli coming through the sense of touch are no doubt
frequent, and they would be still more frequent if it were not that the
very proximity of this sense to the sexual sphere causes it to be guarded
with a care which in the case of the other senses it is impossible to
exercise. This intimacy of touch and the reaction against its sexual
approximations leads to what James has called "the _antisexual instinct_,
the instinct of personal isolation, the actual repulsiveness to us of the
idea of intimate contact with most of the persons we meet, especially
those of our own sex." He refers in this connection to the unpleasantness
of the sensation felt on occupying a seat still warm from the body of
another person.[3] The Catholic Church has always recognized the risks of
vuluptuous emotion involved in tactile contacts, and the facility with
which even the most innocent contacts may take on a libidinous
character.[4]

The following observations were written by a lady (aged 30) who
has never had sexual relationships: "I am only conscious of a
very sweet and pleasurable emotion when coming in contact with
honorable men, and consider that a comparison can be made between
the idealism of such emotions and those of music, of beauties of
Nature, and of productions of art. While studying and writing
articles upon a new subject I came in contact with a specialist,
who rendered me considerable aid, and, one day, while jointly
correcting a piece of work, he touched my hand. This produced a
sweet and pure sensation of thrill through the whole system. I
said nothing; in fact, was too thrilled for speech; and never to
this day have shown any responsive action, but for months at
certain periods, generally twice a month, I have experienced the
most pleasurable emotions. I have seen this friend twice since,
and have a curious feeling that I stand on one side of a hedge,
while he is on the other, and, as neither makes an approach,
pleasure of the highest kind is experienced, but not allowed to
go beyond reasonable and health-giving bounds. In some moments I
feel overcome by a sense of mastery by this man, and yet, feeling
that any approach would be undignified, some pleasure is
experienced in restraining and keeping within proper bounds this
passional emotion. All these thrills of pleasurable emotion
possess a psychic value, and, so long as the nervous system is
kept in perfect health, they do not seem to have the power to
injure, but rather one is able to utilize the passionate emotions
as weapons for pleasure and work."

Various parts of the skin surface appear to have special sexual
sensitiveness, peculiarly marked in many individuals, especially
women; so that, as Féré remarks (_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second
edition, 1902, p. 130), contact stimulation of the lips, lobe of
ear, nape of neck, little finger, knee, etc., may suffice even to
produce the orgasm. Some sexually hyperæsthetic women, as has
already been noted, experience this when shaking hands with a man
who is attractive to them. In some neurotic persons this
sensibility, as Féré shows, may exist in so morbid a degree that
even the contact of the sensitive spot with unattractive persons
or inanimate objects may produce the orgasm. In this connection
reference may be made to the well-known fact that in some
hysterical subjects there are so-called "erogenous zones" simple
pressure on which suffices to evoke the complete orgasm. There
is, perhaps, some significance, from our present point of view,
in the fact that, as emphasized by Savill ("Hysterical Skin
Symptoms," _Lancet_, January 30, 1904), the skin is one of the
very best places to study hysteria.

The intimate connection between the skin and the sexual sphere is
also shown in pathological conditions of the skin, especially in
acne as well as simple pimples on the face. The sexual
development of puberty involves a development of hair in various
regions of the body which previously were hairless. As, however,
the sebaceous glands on the face and elsewhere are the vestiges
of former hairs and survive from a period when the whole body was
hairy, they also tend to experience in an abortive manner this
same impulse. Thus, we may say that, with the development of the
sexual organs at puberty, there is correlated excitement of the
whole pilo-sebaceous apparatus. In the regions where this
apparatus is vestigial, and notably in the face, this abortive
attempt of the hair-follicles and their sebaceous appendages to
produce hairs tends only to disorganization, and simple
_comedones_ or pustular acne pimples are liable to occur. As a
rule, acne appears about puberty and dies out slowly during
adolescence. While fairly common in young women, it is usually
much less severe, but tends to be exacerbated at the menstrual
periods; it is also apt to appear at the change of life. (Stephen
Mackenzie, "The Etiology and Treatment of Acne Vulgaris,"
_British Medical Journal_, September 29, 1894. Laycock [_Nervous
Diseases of Women_, 1840, p. 23] pointed out that acne occurs
chiefly in those parts of the surface covered by sexual hair. A
lucid account of the origin of acne will be found in Woods
Hutchinson's _Studies in Human and Comparative Pathology_, pp.
179-184. G.J. Engelmann ["The Hystero-neuroses," _Gynæcological
Transactions_, 1887, pp. 124 et seq.] discusses various
pathological disorders of the skin as reflex disturbances
originating in the sexual sphere.)

The influence of menstruation in exacerbating acne has been
called in question, but it seems to be well established. Thus,
Bulkley ("Relation between Certain Diseases of the Skin and the
Menstrual Function," _Transactions of the Medical Society of New
York_, 1901, p. 328) found that, in 510 cases of acne in women,
145, or nearly one-third, were worse about the monthly period.
Sometimes it only appeared during menstruation. The exacerbation
occurred much more frequently just before than just after the
period. There was usually some disturbance of menstruation.
Various other disorders of the skin show a similar relationship
to menstruation.

It has been asserted that masturbation is a frequent or constant
cause of acne at puberty. (See, e.g., discussion in _British
Medical Journal_, July, 1882.) This cannot be accepted. Acne very
frequently occurs without masturbation, and masturbation is very
frequently practiced without producing acne. At the same time we
may well believe that at the period of puberty, when the
pilo-sebaceous system is already in sensitive touch with the
sexual system, the shock of frequently repeated masturbation may
(in the same way as disordered menstruation) have its
repercussion on the skin. Thus, a lady has informed me that at
about the age of 18 she found that frequently repeated
masturbation was followed by the appearance of _comedones_.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] A. Franklin, _Les Soins de Toilette_, p. 81.

[3] W. James, _Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii. p. 347.

[4] Numerous passages from the theologians bearing on this point are
brought together in _Moechialogia_, pp. 221-220.

II.

Ticklishness--Its Origin and Significance--The Psychology of
Tickling--Laughter--Laughter as a Kind of Detumescence--The Sexual
Relationships of Itching--The Pleasure of Tickling--Its Decrease with Age
and Sexual Activity.

Touch, as has already been remarked, is the least intellectual of the
senses. There is, however, one form of touch sensation--that is to say,
ticklishness--which is of so special and peculiar a nature that it has
sometimes been put aside in a class apart from all other touch sensations.
Scaliger proposed to class titillation as a sixth, or separate, sense.
Alrutz, of Upsala, regards tickling as a milder degree of itching, and
considers that the two together constitute a sensation of distinct quality
with distinct end-organs, for the mediation of that quality.[5] However we
may regard this extreme view, tickling is certainly a specialized
modification of touch and it is at the same time the most intellectual
mode of touch sensation and that with the closest connection with the
sexual sphere. To regard tickling as an intellectual manifestation may
cause surprise, more especially when it is remembered that ticklishness is
a form of sensation which reaches full development very early in life, and
it has to be admitted that, as compared even with the messages that may be
sent through smell and taste, the intellectual element in ticklishness
remains small. But its presence here has been independently recognized by
various investigators. Groos points out the psychic factor in tickling as
evidenced by the impossibility of self-tickling.[6] Louis Robinson
considers that ticklishness "appears to be one of the simplest
developments of mechanical and automatic nervous processes in the
direction of the complex functioning of the higher centres which comes
within the scope of psychology,"[7] Stanley Hall and Allin remark that
"these minimal touch excitations represent the very oldest stratum of
psychic life in the soul."[8] Hirman Stanley, in a somewhat similar
manner, pushes the intellectual element in ticklishness very far back and
associates it with "tentacular experience." "By temporary self-extension,"
he remarks, "even low amoeboid organisms have slight, but suggestive,
touch experiences that stimulate very general and violent reactions, and
in higher organisms extended touch-organs, as tentacles, antennæ, hair,
etc., become permanent and very delicately sensitive organs, where minimal
contacts have very distinct and powerful reactions." Thus ticklishness
would be the survival of long passed ancestral tentacular experience,
which, originally a stimulation producing intense agitation and alarm, has
now become merely a play activity and a source of keen pleasure.[9]

We need not, however, go so far back in the zoölogical series to explain
the origin and significance of tickling in the human species. Sir J.Y.
Simpson suggested, in an elaborate study of the position of the child in
the womb, that the extreme excitomotory sensibility of the skin in various
regions, such as the sole of the foot, the knee, the sides, which already
exists before birth, has for its object the excitation and preservation of
the muscular movements necessary to keep the foetus in the most favorable
position in the womb.[10] It is, in fact, certainly the case that the
stimulation of all the ticklish regions in the body tends to produce
exactly that curled up position of extreme muscular flexion and general
ovoid shape which is the normal position of the foetus in the womb. We may
well believe that in this early developed reflex activity we have the
basis of that somewhat more complex ticklishness which appears somewhat
later.

The mental element in tickling is indicated by the fact that even a child,
in whom ticklishness is highly developed, cannot tickle himself; so that
tickling is not a simple reflex. This fact was long ago pointed out by
Erasmus Darwin, and he accounted for it by supposing that voluntary
exertion diminishes the energy of sensation.[11] This explanation is,
however, inadmissible, for, although we cannot easily tickle ourselves by
the contact of the skin with our own fingers, we can do so with the aid of
a foreign body, like a feather. We may perhaps suppose that, as
ticklishness has probably developed under the influence of natural
selection as a method of protection against attack and a warning of the
approach of foreign bodies, its end would be defeated if it involved a
simple reaction to the contact of the organism with itself. This need of
protection it is which involves the necessity of a minimal excitation
producing a maximal effect, though the mechanism whereby this takes place
has caused considerable discussion. We may, it is probable, best account
for it by invoking the summation-irradiation theory of pain-pleasure, the
summation of the stimuli in their course through the nerves, aided by
capillary congestion, leading to irradiation due to anastomoses between
the tactile corpuscles, not to speak of the much wider irradiation which
is possible by means of central nervous connections.

Prof. C.L. Herrick adopts this explanation of the phenomena of
tickling, and rests it, in part, on Dogiel's study of the tactile
corpuscles ("Psychological Corollaries of Modern Neurological
Discoveries," _Journal of Comparative Neurology_, March, 1898).
The following remarks of Prof. A. Allin may also be quoted in
further explanation of the same theory: "So far as ticklishness
is concerned, a very important factor in the production of this
feeling is undoubtedly that of the summation of stimuli. In a
research of Stirling's, carried on under Ludwig's direction, it
was shown that reflex contractions only occur from repeated
shocks to the nerve-centres--that is, through summation of
successive stimuli. That this result is also due in some degree
to an alternating increase in the sensibility of the various
areas in question from altered supply of blood is reasonably
certain. As a consequence of this summation-process there would
result in many cases and in cases of excessive nervous discharge
the opposite of pleasure, namely: pain. A number of instances
have been recorded of death resulting from tickling, and there is
no reason to doubt the truth of the statement that Simon de
Montfort, during the persecution of the Albigenses, put some of
them to death by tickling the soles of their feet with a feather.
An additional causal factor in the production of tickling may lie
in the nature and structure of the nervous process involved in
perception in general. According to certain histological
researches of recent years we know that between the sense-organs
and the central nervous system there exist closely connected
chains of conductors or neurons, along which an impression
received by a single sensory cell on the periphery is propagated
avalanchelike through an increasing number of neurons until the
brain is reached. If on the periphery a single cell is excited
the avalanchelike process continues until finally hundreds or
thousands of nerve-cells in the cortex are aroused to
considerable activity. Golgi, Ramón y Cajal, Koelliker, Held,
Retzius, and others have demonstrated the histological basis of
this law for vision, hearing, and smell, and we may safely assume
from the phenomena of tickling that the sense of touch is not
lacking in a similar arrangement. May not a suggestion be
offered, with some plausibility, that even in ideal or
representative tickling, where tickling results, say, from
someone pointing a finger at the ticklish places, this
avalanchelike process may be incited from central centres, thus
producing, although in a modified degree, the pleasant phenomena
in question? As to the deepest causal factor, I should say that
tickling is the result of vasomotor shock." (A. Allin, "On
Laughter," _Psychological Review_, May, 1903.)

The intellectual element in tickling conies out in its connection with
laughter and the sense of the comic, of which it may be said to constitute
the physical basis. While we are not here concerned with laughter and the
comic sense,--a subject which has lately attracted considerable
attention,--it may be instructive to point out that there is more than an
analogy between laughter and the phenomena of sexual tumescence and
detumescence. The process whereby prolonged tickling, with its nervous
summation and irradiation and accompanying hyperæmia, finds sudden relief
in an explosion of laughter is a real example of tumescence--as it has
been defined in the study in another volume entitled "An Analysis of the
Sexual Impulse"--resulting finally in the orgasm of detumescence. The
reality of the connection between the sexual embrace and tickling is
indicated by the fact that in some languages, as in that of the
Fuegians,[12] the same word is applied to both. That ordinary tickling is
not sexual is due to the circumstances of the case and the regions to
which the tickling is applied. If, however, the tickling is applied within
the sexual sphere, then there is a tendency for orgasm to take place
instead of laughter. The connection which, through the phenomena of
tickling, laughter thus bears to the sexual sphere is well indicated, as
Groos has pointed out, by the fact that in sexually-minded people sexual
allusions tend to produce laughter, this being the method by which they
are diverted from the risks of more specifically sexual detumescence.[13]

Reference has been made to the view of Alrutz, according to which
tickling is a milder degree of itching. It is more convenient and
probably more correct to regard itching or pruritus, as it is
termed in its pathological forms, as a distinct sensation, for it
does not arise under precisely the same conditions as tickling
nor is it relieved in the same way. There is interest, however,
in pointing out in this connection that, like tickling, itching
has a real parallelism to the specialized sexual sensations.
Bronson, who has very ably interpreted the sensations of itching
(New York Neurological Society, October 7, 1890; _Medical News_,
February 14, 1903, and summarized in the _British Medical
Journal_, March 7, 1903; and elsewhere), regards it as a
perversion of the sense of touch, a dysæsthesia due to obstructed
nerve-excitation with imperfect conduction of the generated force
into correlated nervous energy. The scratching which relieves
itching directs the nervous energy into freer channels, sometimes
substituting for the pruritus either painful or voluptuous
sensations. Such voluptuous sensations may be regarded as a
generalized aphrodisiac sense comparable to the specialized
sexual orgasm. Bronson refers to the significant fact that
itching occurs so frequently in the sexual region, and states
that sexual neurasthenia is sometimes the only discoverable cause
of genital and anal pruritus. (Cf. discussion on pruritus,
_British Medical Journal_, November 30, 1895.) Gilman, again
(_American Journal of Psychology_, vi, p. 22), considers that
scratching, as well as sneezing, is comparable to coitus.

The sexual embrace has an intimate connection with the phenomena of
ticklishness which could not fail to be recognized. This connection is,
indeed, the basis of Spinoza's famous definition of love,--"_Amor est
titillatio quædam concomitante idea causæ externæ_,"--a statement which
seems to be reflected in Chamfort's definition of love as "_l'échange de
deux fantaisies, et le contact de deux epidermes_." The sexual act, says
Gowers, is, in fact, a skin reflex.[14] "The sexual parts," Hall and Allin
state, "have a ticklishness as unique as their function and as keen as
their importance." Herrick finds the supreme illustration of the summation
and irradiation theory of tickling in the phenomena of erotic excitement,
and points out that in harmony with this the skin of the sexual region is,
as Dogiel has shown, that portion of the body in which the tactile
corpuscles are most thoroughly and elaborately provided with anastomosing
fibres. It has been pointed out[15] that, when ordinary tactile
sensibility is partially abolished,--especially in hemianæsthesia in the
insane,--some sexual disturbance is specially apt to be found in
association.

In young children, in girls even when they are no longer children, and
occasionally in men, tickling may be a source of acute pleasure, which in
very early life is not sexual, but later tends to become so under
circumstances predisposing to the production of erotic emotion, and
especially when the nervous system is keyed up to a high tone favorable
for the production of the maximum effect of tickling.

"When young," writes a lady aged 28, "I was extremely fond of
being tickled, and I am to some extent still. Between the ages of
10 and 12 it gave me exquisite pleasure, which I now regard as
sexual in character. I used to bribe my younger sister to tickle
my feet until she was tired."

Stanley Hall and Allin in their investigation of the phenomena of
tickling, largely carried out among young women teachers, found
that in 60 clearly marked cases ticklishness was more marked at
one time than another, "as when they have been 'carrying on,' or
are in a happy mood, are nervous or unwell, after a good meal,
when being washed, when in perfect health, when with people they
like, etc." (Hall and Allin, "Tickling and Laughter," _American
Journal of Psychology_, October, 1897.) It will be observed that
most of the conditions mentioned are such as would be favorable
to excitations of an emotionally sexual character.

The palms of the hands may be very ticklish during sexual
excitement, especially in women, and Moll (_Konträre
Sexualempfindung_, p. 180) remarks that in some men titillation
of the skin of the back, of the feet, and even of the forehead
evokes erotic feelings.

It may be added that, as might be expected, titillation of the
skin often has the same significance in animals as in man. "In
some animals," remarks Louis Robinson (art. "Ticklishness,"
_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_), "local titillation of
the skin, though in parts remote from the reproductive organs,
plainly acts indirectly upon them as a stimulus. Thus, Harvey
records that, by stroking the back of a favorite parrot (which he
had possessed for years and supposed to be a male), he not only
gave the bird gratification,--which was the sole intention of the
illustrious physiologist,--but also caused it to reveal its sex
by laying an egg."

The sexual significance of tickling is very clearly indicated by the fact
that the general ticklishness of the body, which is so marked in children
and in young girls, greatly diminishes, as a rule, after sexual
relationships have been established. Dr. Gina Lombroso, who investigated
the cutaneous reflexes, found that both the abdominal and plantar
reflexes, which are well marked in childhood and in young people between
the ages of 15 and 18, were much diminished in older persons, and to a
greater extent in women than in men, to a greater extent in the abdominal
region than on the soles of the feet;[16] her results do not directly show
the influence of sexual relationship, but they have an indirect bearing
which is worth noting.

The difference in ticklishness between the unmarried woman and the married
woman corresponds to their difference in degree of modesty. Both modesty
and ticklishness may be said to be characters which are no longer needed.
From this point of view the general ticklishness of the skin is a kind of
body modesty. It is so even apart from any sexual significance of
tickling, and Louis Robinson has pointed out that in young apes, puppies,
and other like animals the most ticklish regions correspond to the most
vulnerable spots in a fight, and that consequently in the mock fights of
early life skill in defending these spots is attained.

In Iceland, according to Margarethe Filhés (as quoted by Max
Bartels, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1900, ht. 2-3, p. 57), it
may be known whether a youth is pure or a maid is intact by their
susceptibility to tickling. It is considered a bad sign if that
is lost.

I am indebted to a medical correspondent for the following
communication: "Married women have told me that they find that
after marriage they are not ticklish under the arms or on the
breasts, though before marriage any tickling or touching in these
regions, especially by a man, would make them jump or get
hysterical or 'queer,' as they call it. Before coitus the sexual
energy seems to be dissipated along all the nerve-channels and
especially along the secondary sexual routes,--the breasts, nape
of neck, eyebrows, lips, cheeks, armpits, and hair thereon,
etc.,--but after marriage the surplus energy is diverted from
these secondary channels, and response to tickling is diminished.
I have often noted in insane cases, especially mania in
adolescent girls, that they are excessively ticklish. Again, in
ordinary routine practice I have observed that, though married
women show no ticklishness during auscultation and percussion of
the chest, this is by no means always so in young girls. Perhaps
ticklishness in virgins is Nature's self-protection against rape
and sexual advances, and the young girl instinctively wishing to
hide the armpits, breasts, and other ticklish regions, tucks
herself up to prevent these parts being touched. The married
woman, being in love with a man, does not shut up these parts, as
she reciprocates the advances that he makes; she no longer
requires ticklishness as a protection against sexual aggression."

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Alrutz's views are summarized in _Psychological Review_, Sept., 1901.

[6] _Die Spiele der Menschen_, 1899, p. 206.

[7] L. Robinson, art. "Ticklishness," Tuke's _Dictionary of Psychological
Medicine_.

[8] Stanley Hall and Allin, "Tickling and Laughter," _American Journal of
Psychology_, October, 1897.

[9] H.M. Stanley, "Remarks on Tickling and Laughter," _American Journal of
Psychology_, vol. ix, January, 1898.

[10] Simpson, "On the Attitude of the Foetus in Utero," _Obstetric
Memoirs_, 1856, vol. ii.

[11] Erasmus Darwin, _Zoönomia_, Sect. XVII, 4.

[12] Hyades and Deniker, _Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn_, vol. vii. p.
296.

[13] Such an interpretation is supported by the arguments of W. McDougall
("The Theory of Laughter," _Nature_, February 5, 1903), who contends,
without any reference to the sexual field, that one of the objects of
laughter is automatically to "disperse our attention."

[14] Even the structure of the vaginal mucous membrane, it may be noted,
is analogous to that of the skin. D. Berry Hart, "Note on the Development
of the Clitoris, Vagina, and Hymen," _Transactions of the Edinburgh
Obstetrical Society_, vol. xxi, 1896.

[15] W.H.B. Stoddart, "Anæsthesia in the Insane," _Journal of Mental
Science_, October, 1899.

[16] Gina Lombroso, "Sur les Réflexes Cutanés," International Congress of
Criminal Anthropology, Amsterdam, _Comptes Rendus_, p. 295.

III.

The Secondary Sexual Skin Centres--Orificial Contacts--Cunnilingus and
Fellatio--The Kiss--The Nipples--The Sympathy of the Breasts with the
Primary Sexual Centres--This Connection Operative both through the Nerves
and through the Blood--The Influence of Lactation on the Sexual
Centres--Suckling and Sexual Emotion--The Significance of the Association
between Suckling and Sexual Emotion--This Association as a Cause of Sexual
Perversity.

We have seen that the skin generally has a high degree of sensibility,
which frequently tends to be in more or less definite association with the
sexual centres. We have seen also that the central and specific sexual
sensation, the sexual embrace itself, is, in large measure, a specialized
kind of skin reflex. Between the generalized skin sensations and the great
primary sexual centre of sensation there are certain secondary sexual
centres which, on account of their importance, may here be briefly
considered.

These secondary centres have in common the fact that they always involve
the entrances and the exits of the body--the regions, that is, where skin
merges into mucous membrane, and where, in the course of evolution,
tactile sensibility has become highly refined. It may, indeed, be said
generally of these frontier regions of the body that their contact with
the same or a similar frontier region in another person of opposite sex,
under conditions otherwise favorable to tumescence, will tend to produce a
minimum and even sometimes a maximum degree of sexual excitation. Contact
of these regions with each other or with the sexual region itself so
closely simulates the central sexual reflex that channels are set up for
the same nervous energy and secondary sexual centres are constituted.

It is important to remember that the phenomena we are here concerned with
are essentially normal. Many of them are commonly spoken of as
perversions. In so far, however, as they are aids to tumescence they must
be regarded as coming within the range of normal variation. They may be
considered unæsthetic, but that is another matter. It has, moreover, to be
remembered that æsthetic values are changed under the influence of sexual
emotion; from the lover's point of view many things are beautiful which
are unbeautiful from the point of view of him who is not a lover, and the
greater the degree to which the lover is swayed by his passion the greater
the extent to which his normal æsthetic standard is liable to be modified.
A broad consideration of the phenomena among civilized and uncivilized
peoples amply suffices to show the fallacy of the tendency, so common
among unscientific writers on these subjects, to introduce normal æsthetic
standards into the sexual sphere. From the normal standpoint of ordinary
daily life, indeed, the whole process of sex is unæsthetic, except the
earlier stages of tumescence.[17]

So long as they constitute a part of the phase of tumescence, the
utilization of the sexual excitations obtainable through these channels
must be considered within the normal range of variation, as we may
observe, indeed, among many animals. When, however, such contacts of the
orifices of the body, other than those of the male and female sexual
organs proper, are used to procure not merely tumescence, but
detumescence, they become, in the strict and technical sense, perversions.
They are perversions in exactly the same sense as are the methods of
intercourse which involve the use of checks to prevent fecundation. The
æsthetic question, however, remains the same as if we were dealing with
tumescence. It is necessary that this should be pointed out clearly, even
at the risk of misapprehension, as confusions are here very common.

The essentially sexual character of the sensitivity of the
orificial contacts is shown by the fact that it may sometimes be
accidentally developed even in early childhood. This is well
illustrated in a case recorded by Féré. A little girl of 4, of
nervous temperament and liable to fits of anger in which she
would roll on the ground and tear her clothes, once ran out into
the garden in such a fit of temper and threw herself on the lawn
in a half-naked condition. As she lay there two dogs with whom
she was accustomed to play came up and began to lick the
uncovered parts of the body. It so happened that as one dog
licked her mouth the other licked her sexual parts. She
experienced a shock of intense sensation which she could never
forget and never describe, accompanied by a delicious tension of
the sexual organs. She rose and ran away with a feeling of shame,
though she could not comprehend what had happened. The impression
thus made was so profound that it persisted throughout life and
served as the point of departure of sexual perversions, while the
contact of a dog's tongue with her mouth alone afterward sufficed
to evoke sexual pleasure. (Féré, _Archives de Neurologie_, 1903,
No. 90.)

I do not purpose to discuss here either _cunnilingus_ (the
apposition of the mouth to the female pudendum) or _fellatio_
(the apposition of the mouth to the male organ), the agent in the
former case being, in normal heterosexual relationships, a man,
in the latter a woman; they are not purely tactile phenomena, but
involve various other physical and psychic elements.
_Cunnilingus_ was a very familiar manifestation in classic times,
as shown by frequent and mostly very contemptuous references in
Aristophanes, Juvenal, and many other Greek and Roman writers;
the Greeks regarded it as a Phoenician practice, just as it is
now commonly considered French; it tends to be especially
prevalent at all periods of high civilization. _Fellatio_ has
also been equally well known, in both ancient and modern times,
especially as practiced by inverted men. It may be accepted that
both _cunnilingus_ and _fellatio_, as practiced by either sex,
are liable to occur among healthy or morbid persons, in
heterosexual or homosexual relationships. They have little
psychological significance, except to the extent that when
practiced to the exclusion of normal sexual relationships they
become perversions, and as such tend to be associated with
various degenerative conditions, although such associations are
not invariable.

The essentially normal character of _cunnilingus_ and _fellatio_,
when occurring as incidents in the process of tumescence, is
shown by the fact that they are practiced by many animals. This
is the case, for instance, among dogs. Moll points out that not
infrequently the bitch, while under the dog, but before
intromission, will change her position to lick the dog's
penis--apparently from an instinctive impulse to heighten her own
and his excitement--and then return to the normal position, while
_cunnilingus_ is of constant occurrence among animals, and on
account of its frequency among dogs was called by the Greeks
skylax (Rosenbaum, _Geschichte der Lustseuche im Altertume_,
fifth edition, pp. 260-278; also notes in Moll, _Untersuchungen
über pie Libido Sexualis_, Bd. I, pp. 134, 369; and Bloch,
_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis_, Teil II, pp.
216 et seq.)

The occurrence of _cunnilingus_ as a sexual episode of tumescence
among lower human races is well illustrated by a practice of the
natives of the Caroline Islands (as recorded by Kubary in his
ethnographic study of this people and quoted by Ploss and
Bartels, _Das Weib_, vol. i). It is here customary for a man to
place a piece of fish between the labia, while he stimulates the
latter by his tongue and teeth until under stress of sexual
excitement the woman urinates; this is regarded as an indication
that the proper moment for intercourse has arrived. Such a
practice rests on physiologically sound facts whatever may be
thought of it from an æsthetic standpoint.

The contrast between the normal æsthetic standpoint in this
matter and the lover's is well illustrated by the following
quotations: Dr. A.B. Holder, in the course of his description of
the American Indian _boté_, remarks, concerning _fellatio_: "Of
all the many varieties of sexual perversion, this, it seems to
me, is the most debased that could be conceived of." On the other
hand, in a communication from a writer and scholar of high
intellectual distinction occurs the statement: "I affirm that, of
all sexual acts, _fellatio_ is most an affair of imagination and
sympathy." It must be pointed out that there is no contradiction
in these two statements, and that each is justified, according as
we take the point of view of the ordinary onlooker or of the
impassioned lover eager to give a final proof of his or her
devotion. It must be added that from a scientific point of view
we are not entitled to take either side.

Of the whole of this group of phenomena, the most typical and the most
widespread example is certainly the kiss. We have in the lips a highly
sensitive frontier region between skin and mucous membrane, in many
respects analogous to the vulvo-vaginal orifice, and reinforcible,
moreover, by the active movements of the still more highly sensitive
tongue. Close and prolonged contact of these regions, therefore, under
conditions favorable to tumescence sets up a powerful current of nervous
stimulation. After those contacts in which the sexual regions themselves
take a direct part, there is certainly no such channel for directing
nervous force into the sexual sphere as the kiss. This is nowhere so well
recognized as in France, where a young girl's lips are religiously kept
for her lover, to such an extent, indeed, that young girls sometimes come
to believe that the whole physical side of love is comprehended in a kiss
on the mouth; so highly intelligent a woman as Madam Adam has described
the agony she felt as a girl when kissed on the lips by a man, owing to
the conviction that she had thereby lost her virtue. Although the lips
occupy this highly important position as a secondary sexual focus
in the sphere of touch, the kiss is--unlike _cunnilingus_ and
_fellatio_--confined to man and, indeed, to a large extent, to civilized
man. It is the outcome of a compound evolution which had its beginning
outside the sphere of touch, and it would therefore be out of place to
deal with the interesting question of its development in this place. It
will be discussed elsewhere.[18]

There is yet another orificial frontier region which is a highly important
tactile sexual focus: the nipple. The breasts raise, indeed, several
interesting questions in their intimate connection with the sexual sphere
and it may be worth while to consider them at this point.

The breasts have from the present point of view this special significance
among the sexual centres that they primarily exist, not for the contact of
the lover, but the contact of the child. This is doubtless, indeed, the
fundamental fact on which all the touch contacts we are here concerned
with have grown up. The sexual sensitivity of the lover's lips to
orificial contacts has been developed from the sensitivity of the infant's
lips to contact with his mother's nipple. It is on the ground of that
evolution that we are bound to consider here the precise position of the
breasts as a sexual centre.

As the great secreting organs of milk, the function of the breasts must
begin immediately the child is cut off from the nutrition derived from
direct contact with his mother's blood. It is therefore essential that the
connection between the sexual organs proper, more especially the womb, and
the breasts should be exceedingly intimate, so that the breasts may be in
a condition to respond adequately to the demand of the child's sucking
lips at the earliest moment after birth. As a matter of fact, this
connection is very intimate, so intimate that it takes place in two
totally distinct ways--by the nervous system and by the blood.

The breasts of young girls sometimes become tender at puberty in
sympathy with the evolution of the sexual organs, although the
swelling of the breasts at this period is not normally a
glandular process. At the recurring periods of menstruation,
again, sensations in the breasts are not uncommon.

It is not, however, until impregnation occurs that really
decisive changes take place in the breasts. "As soon as the ovum
is impregnated, that is to say within a few days," as W.D.A.
Griffith states it ("The Diagnosis of Pregnancy," _British
Medical Journal_, April 11, 1903), "the changes begin to occur in
the breast, changes which are just as well worked out as are the
changes in the uterus and the vagina, which, from the
commencement of pregnancy, prepare for the labor which ought to
follow nine months afterward. These are changes in the direction
of marked activity of function. An organ which was previously
quite passive, without activity of circulation and the effects of
active circulation, begins to grow and continues to grow in
activity and size as pregnancy progresses."

The association between breasts and womb is so obvious that it
has not escaped many savage peoples, who are often, indeed,
excellent observers. Among one primitive people at least the
activity of the breast at impregnation seems to be clearly
recognized. The Sinangolo of British New Guinea, says Seligmann
(_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, July-December, 1902,
p. 298) believe that conception takes place in the breasts; on
this account they hold that coitus should never take place before
the child is weaned or he might imbibe semen with the milk.

It is natural to assume that this connection between the activity
of the womb and the glandular activity of the breasts is a
nervous connection, by means of the spinal cord, and such a
connection certainly exists and plays a very important part in
the stimulating action of the breasts on the sexual organs. But
that there is a more direct channel of communication even than
the nervous system is shown by the fact that the secretion of
milk will take place at parturition, even when the nervous
connection has been destroyed. Mironoff found that, when the
mammary gland is completely separated from the central nervous
system, secretion, though slightly diminished, still continued.
In two goats he cut the nerves shortly before parturition and
after birth the breasts still swelled and functioned normally
(_Archives des Sciences Biologiques_, St. Petersburg, 1895,
summarized in _L'Année Biologique_; 1895, p. 329). Ribbert,
again, cut out the mammary gland of a young rabbit and
transplanted it into the ear; five months after the rabbit bore
young and the gland secreted milk freely. The case has been
reported of a woman whose spinal cord was destroyed by an
accident at the level of the fifth and sixth dorsal vertebræ,
yet lactation was perfectly normal (_British Medical Journal_,
August 5, 1899, p. 374). We are driven to suppose that there is
some chemical change in the blood, some internal secretion from
the uterus or the ovaries, which acts as a direct stimulant to
the breasts. (See a comprehensive discussion of the phenomena of
the connection between the breasts and sexual organs, though the
conclusions are not unassailable, by Temesvary, _Journal of
Obstetrics and Gynæcology of the British Empire_, June, 1903).
That this hypothetical secretion starts from the womb rather than
the ovaries seems to be indicated by the fact that removal of
both ovaries during pregnancy will not suffice to prevent
lactation. In favor of the ovaries, see Beatson, _Lancet_, July,
1896; in favor of the uterus, Armand Routh, "On the Interaction
between the Ovaries and the Mammary Glands," _British Medical
Journal_, September 30, 1899.

While, however, the communications from the sexual organs to the breast
are of a complex and at present ill understood character, the
communication from the breasts to the sexual organs is without doubt
mainly and chiefly nervous. When the child is put to the breast after
birth the suction of the nipple causes a reflex contraction of the womb,
and it is held by many, though not all, authorities that in a woman who
does not suckle her child there is some risk that the womb will not return
to its normal involuted size. It has also been asserted that to put a
child to the breast during the early months of pregnancy causes so great a
degree of uterine contraction that abortion may result.

Freund found in Germany that stimulation of the nipples by an
electrical cupping apparatus brought about contraction of the
pregnant uterus. At an earlier period it was recommended to
irritate the nipple in order to excite the uterus to parturient
action. Simpson, while pointing out that this was scarcely
adequate to produce the effect desired, thought that placing a
child to the breast after labor had begun might increase uterine
action. (J.Y. Simpson, _Obstetric Memoirs_, vol. i, p. 836; also
Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 132).

The influence of lactation over the womb in preventing the return
of menstruation during its continuance is well known. According
to Remfry's investigation of 900 cases in England, in 57 per
cent. of cases there is no menstruation during lactation. (L.
Remfry, in paper read before Obstetrical Society of London,
summarized in the _British Medical Journal_, January 11, 1896, p.
86). Bendix, in Germany, found among 140 cases that in about 40
per cent. there was no menstruation during lactation (paper read
before Düsseldorf meeting of the Society of German Naturalists
and Physicians, 1899). When the child is not suckled menstruation
tends to reappear about six months after parturition.

It is possible that the divergent opinions of authorities
concerning the necessarily favorable influence of lactation in
promoting the return of the womb to its normal size may be due to
a confusion of two distinct influences: the reflex action of the
nipple on the womb and the effects of prolonged glandular
secretion of the breasts in debilitated persons. The act of
suckling undoubtedly tends to promote uterine contraction, and in
healthy women during lactation the womb may even (according to
Vineberg) be temporarily reduced to a smaller size than before
impregnation, thus producing what is known as "lactation
atrophy." In debilitated women, however, the strain of
milk-production may lead to general lack of muscular tone, and
involution of the womb thus be hindered rather than aided by
lactation.

On the objective side, then, the nipple is to be regarded as an erectile
organ, richly supplied with nerves and vessels, which, under the
stimulation of the infant's lips--or any similar compression, and even
under the influence of emotion or cold,--becomes firm and projects, mainly
as a result of muscular contraction; for, unlike the penis and the
clitoris, the nipple contains no true erectile tissue and little capacity
for vascular engorgement.[19] We must then suppose that an impetus tends
to be transmitted through the spinal cord to the sexual organs, setting up
a greater or less degree of nervous and muscular excitement with uterine
contraction. These being the objective manifestations, what manifestations
are to be noted on the subjective side?

It is a remarkable proof of the general indifference with which in Europe
even the fairly constant and prominent characteristics of the psychology
of women have been treated until recent times that, so far as I am
aware,--though I have made no special research to this end,--no one before
the end of the eighteenth century had recorded the fact that the act of
suckling tends to produce in women voluptuous sexual emotions. Cabanis in
1802, in the memoir on "Influence des Sexes" in his _Rapports du Physique
et du Moral de l'Homme_, wrote that several suckling women had told him
that the child in sucking the breast made them experience a vivid
sensation of pleasure, shared in some degree by the sexual organs. There
can be no doubt that in healthy suckling women this phenomenon is
exceedingly common, though in the absence of any methodical and precise
investigation it cannot be affirmed that it is experienced by every woman
in some degree, and it is highly probable that this is not the case. One
lady, perfectly normal, states that she has had stronger sexual feelings
in suckling her children than she has ever experienced with her husband,
but that so far as possible she has tried to repress them, as she regards
them as brutish under these circumstances. Many other women state
generally that suckling is the most delicious physical feeling they have
ever experienced. In most cases, however, it does not appear to lead to a
desire for intercourse, and some of those who make this statement have no
desire for coitus during lactation, though they may have strong sexual
needs at other times. It is probable that this corresponds to the normal
condition, and that the voluptuous sensations aroused by suckling are
adequately gratified by the child. It may be added that there are probably
many women who could say, with a lady quoted by Féré,[20] that the only
real pleasures of sex they have ever known are those derived from their
suckling infants.

It is not difficult to see why this normal association of sexual emotion
with suckling should have come about. It is essential for the preservation
of the lives of young mammals that the mothers should have an adequate
motive in pleasurable sensation for enduring the trouble of suckling. The
most obvious method for obtaining the necessary degree of pleasurable
sensation lay in utilizing the reservoir of sexual emotion, with which
channels of communication might already be said to be open through the
action of the sexual organs on the breasts during pregnancy. The
voluptuous element in suckling may thus be called a merciful provision of
Nature for securing the maintenance of the child.

Cabanis seems to have realized the significance of this
connection as the basis of the sympathy between mother and child,
and more recently Lombroso and Ferrero have remarked (_La Donna
Delinquente_, p. 438) on the fact that maternal love has a sexual
basis in the element of venereal pleasure, though usually
inconsiderable, experienced during suckling. Houzeau has referred
to the fact that in the majority of animals the relation between
mother and offspring is only close during the period of
lactation, and this is certainly connected with the fact that it
is only during lactation that the female animal can derive
physical gratification from her offspring. When living on a farm
I have ascertained that cows sometimes, though not frequently,
exhibit slight signs of sexual excitement, with secretion of
mucus, while being milked; so that, as the dairymaid herself
observed, it is as if they were being "bulled." The sow, like
some other mammals, often eats her own young after birth,
mistaking them, it is thought, for the placenta, which is
normally eaten by most mammals; it is said that the sow never
eats her young when they have once taken the teat.

It occasionally happens that this normal tendency for suckling to
produce voluptuous sexual emotions is present in an extreme
degree, and may lead to sexual perversions. It does not appear
that the sexual sensations aroused by suckling usually culminate
in the orgasm; this however, was noted in a case recorded by
Féré, of a slightly neurotic woman in whom intense sexual
excitement occurred during suckling, especially if prolonged; so
far as possible, she shortened the periods of suckling in order
to prevent, not always successfully, the occurrence of the orgasm
(Féré, _Archives de Neurologie_ No. 30, 1903). Icard refers to
the case of a woman who sought to become pregnant solely for the
sake of the voluptuous sensations she derived from suckling, and
Yellowlees (Art. "Masturbation," _Dictionary of Psychological
Medicine_) speaks of the overwhelming character of "the storms of
sexual feeling sometimes observed during lactation."

It may be remarked that the frequency of the association between
lactation and the sexual sensations is indicated by the fact
that, as Savage remarks, lactational insanity is often
accompanied by fancies regarding the reproductive organs.

When we have realized the special sensitivity of the orificial regions and
the peculiarly close relationships between the breasts and the sexual
organs we may easily understand the considerable part which they normally
play in the art of love. As one of the chief secondary sexual characters
in women, and one of her chief beauties, a woman's breasts offer
themselves to the lover's lips with a less intimate attraction than her
mouth only because the mouth is better able to respond. On her side, such
contact is often instinctively desired. Just as the sexual disturbance of
pregnancy is accompanied by a sympathetic disturbance in the breasts, so
the sexual excitement produced by the lover's proximity reacts on the
breasts; the nipple becomes turgid and erect in sympathy with the
clitoris; the woman craves to place her lover in the place of the child,
and experiences a sensation in which these two supreme objects of her
desire are deliciously mingled.

The powerful effect which stimulation of the nipple produces on
the sexual sphere has led to the breasts playing a prominent part
in the erotic art of those lands in which this art has been most
carefully cultivated. Thus in India, according to Vatsyayana,
many authors are of the opinion that in approaching a woman a
lover should begin by sucking the nipples of her breasts, and in
the songs of the Bayaderes of Southern India sucking the nipple
is mentioned as one of the natural preliminaries of coitus.

In some cases, and more especially in neurotic persons, the
sexual pleasure derived from manipulation of the nipple passes
normal limits and, being preferred even to coitus, becomes a
perversion. In girls' schools, it is said, especially in France,
sucking and titillation of the breasts are not uncommon; in men,
also, titillation of the nipples occasionally produces sexual
sensations (Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 132).
Hildebrandt recorded the case of a young woman whose nipples had
been sucked by her lover; by constantly drawing her breasts she
became able to suck them herself and thus attained extreme sexual
pleasure. A.J. Bloch, of New Orleans, has noted the case of a
woman who complained of swelling of the breasts; the gentlest
manipulation produced an orgasm, and it was found that the
swelling had been intentionally produced for the sake of this
manipulation. Moraglia in Italy knew a very beautiful woman who
was perfectly cold in normal sexual relationships, but madly
excited when her husband pressed or sucked her breasts. Lombroso
(_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1885, fasc. IV) has described the
somewhat similar case of a woman who had no sexual sensitivity in
the clitoris, vagina, or labia, and no pleasure in coitus except
in very strange positions, but possessed intense sexual feelings
in the right nipple as well as in the upper third of the thigh.

It is remarkable that not only is suckling apt to be accompanied
by sexual pleasure in the mother, but that, in some cases, the
infant also appears to have a somewhat similar experience. This
is, at all events, indicated in a remarkable case recorded by
Féré (_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 257). A female
infant child of slightly neurotic heredity was weaned at the age
of 14 months, but so great was her affection for her mother's
breasts, though she had already become accustomed to other food,
that this was only accomplished with great difficulty and by
allowing her still to caress the naked breasts several times a
day. This went on for many months, when the mother, becoming
again pregnant, insisted on putting an end to it. So jealous was
the child, however, that it was necessary to conceal from her the
fact that her younger sister was suckled at her mother's breasts,
and once at the age of 3, when she saw her father aiding her
mother to undress, she became violently jealous of him. This
jealousy, as well as the passion for her mother's breasts,
persisted to the age of puberty, though she learned to conceal
it. At the age of 13, when menstruation began, she noticed in
dancing with her favorite girl friends that when her breasts came
in contact with theirs she experienced a very agreeable
sensation, with erection of the nipples; but it was not till the
age of 16 that she observed that the sexual region took part in
this excitement and became moist. From this period she had erotic
dreams about young girls. She never experienced any attraction
for young men, but eventually married; though having much esteem
and affection for her husband, she never felt any but the
slightest sexual enjoyment in his arms, and then only by evoking
feminine images. This case, in which the sensations of an infant
at the breast formed the point of departure of a sexual
perversion which lasted through life, is, so far as I am aware,
unique.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Jonas Cohn (_Allgemeine Æsthetik_, 1901, p. 11) lays it down that
psychology has nothing to do with good or bad taste. "The distinction
between good and bad taste has no meaning for psychology. On this account,
the fundamental conceptions of æsthetics cannot arise from psychology." It
may be a question whether this view can be accepted quite absolutely.

[18] See Appendix A: "The Origins of the Kiss."

[19] See J.B. Hellier, "On the Nipple Reflex," _British Medical Journal_,
November 7, 1896.

[20] Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 147.

IV.

The Bath--Antagonism of Primitive Christianity to the Cult of the
Skin--Its Cult of Personal Filth--The Reasons which Justified this
Attitude--The World-wide Tendency to Association between Extreme
Cleanliness and Sexual Licentiousness--The Immorality Associated with
Public Baths in Europe down to Modern Times.

The hygiene of the skin, as well as its special cult, consists in bathing.
The bath, as is well known, attained under the Romans a degree of
development which, in Europe at all events, it has never reached before or
since, and the modern visitor to Rome carries away with him no more
impressive memory than that of the Baths of Caracalla. Since the coming of
Christianity the cult of the skin, and even its hygiene, have never again
attained the same general and unquestioned exaltation. The Church killed
the bath. St. Jerome tells us with approval that when the holy Paula noted
that any of her nuns were too careful in this matter she would gravely
reprove them, saying that "the purity of the body and its garments means
the impurity of the soul."[21] Or, as the modern monk of Mount Athos still
declares: "A man should live in dirt as in a coat of mail, so that his
soul may sojourn more securely within."

Our knowledge of the bathing arrangements of Roman days is
chiefly derived from Pompeii. Three public baths (two for both
men and women, who were also probably allowed to use the third
occasionally) have so far been excavated in this small town, as
well as at least three private bathing establishments (at least
one of them for women), while about a dozen houses contain
complete baths for private use. Even in a little farm house at
Boscoreale (two miles out of Pompeii) there was an elaborate
series of bathing rooms. It may be added that Pompeii was well
supplied with water. All houses but the poorest had flowing
jets, and some houses had as many as ten jets. (See Man's
_Pompeii_, Chapters XXVI-XXVIII.)

The Church succeeded to the domination of imperial Rome, and
adopted many of the methods of its predecessor. But there could
be no greater contrast than is presented by the attitude of
Paganism and of Christianity toward the bath.

As regards the tendencies of the public baths in imperial Rome,
some of the evidence is brought together in the section on this
subject in Rosenbaum's _Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume_.
As regards the attitude of the earliest Christian ascetics in
this matter I may refer the reader to an interesting passage in
Lecky's _History of European Morals_ (vol. ii, pp. 107-112), in
which are brought together a number of highly instructive
examples of the manner in which many of the most eminent of the
early saints deliberately cultivated personal filth.

In the middle ages, when the extreme excesses of the early
ascetics had died out, and monasticiam became regulated, monks
generally took two baths a year when in health; in illness they
could be taken as often as necessary. The rules of Cluny only
allowed three towels to the community: one for the novices, one
for the professed, and one for the lay brothers. At the end of
the seventeenth century Madame de Mazarin, having retired to a
convent of Visitandines, one day desired to wash her feet, but
the whole establishment was set in an uproar at such an idea, and
she received a direct refusal. In 1760 the Dominican Richard
wrote that in itself the bath is permissible, but it must be
taken solely for necessity, not for pleasure. The Church taught,
and this lesson is still inculcated in convent schools, that it
is wrong to expose the body even to one's own gaze, and it is not
surprising that many holy persons boasted that they had never
even washed their hands. (Most of these facts have been taken
from A. Franklin, _Les Soins de Toilette_, one of the _Vie Privée
d'Autrefois_ series, in which further details may be found.)

In sixteenth-century Italy, a land of supreme elegance and
fashion, superior even to France, the conditions were the same,
and how little water found favor even with aristocratic ladies we
may gather from the contemporary books on the toilet, which
abound with recipes against itch and similar diseases. It should
be added that Burckhardt (_Die Cultur der Renaissance in
Italien_, eighth edition, volume ii, p. 92) considers that in
spite of skin diseases the Italians of the Renaissance were the
first nation in Europe for cleanliness.

It is unnecessary to consider the state of things in other
European countries. The aristocratic conditions of former days
are the plebeian conditions of to-day. So far as England is
concerned, such documents as Chadwick's _Report on the Sanitary
Condition of the Laboring Population of Great Britain_ (1842)
sufficiently illustrate the ideas and the practices as regards
personal cleanliness which prevailed among the masses during the
nineteenth century and which to a large extent still prevail.

A considerable amount of opprobrium has been cast upon the Catholic Church
for its direct and indirect influence in promoting bodily uncleanliness.
Nietzsche sarcastically refers to the facts, and Mr. Frederick Harrison
asserts that "the tone of the middle ages in the matter of dirt was a form
of mental disease." It would be easy to quote many other authors to the
same effect.

It is necessary to point out, however, that the writers who have committed
themselves to such utterances have not only done an injustice to
Christianity, but have shown a lack of historical insight. Christianity
was essentially and fundamentally a rebellion against the classic world,
against its vices, and against their concomitant virtues, against both its
practices and its ideals. It sprang up in a different part of the
Mediterranean basin, from a different level of culture; it found its
supporters in a new and lower social stratum. The cult of charity,
simplicity, and faith, while not primarily ascetic, became inevitably
allied with asceticism, because from its point of view: sexuality was the
very stronghold of the classic world. In the second century the genius of
Clement of Alexandria and of the great Christian thinkers who followed him
seized on all those elements in classic life and philosophy which could be
amalgamated with Christianity without, as they trusted, destroying its
essence, but in the matter of sexuality there could be no compromise, and
the condemnation of sexuality involved the condemnation of the bath. It
required very little insight and sagacity for the Christians to
see--though we are now apt to slur over the fact--that the cult of the
bath was in very truth the cult of the flesh.[22] However profound their
ignorance of anatomy, physiology, and psychology might be, they had
before them ample evidence to show that the skin is an outlying sexual
zone and that every application which promoted the purity, brilliance, and
healthfulness of the skin constituted a direct appeal, feeble or strong as
the case might be, to those passions against which they were warring. The
moral was evident: better let the temporary garment of your flesh be
soaked with dirt than risk staining the radiant purity of your immortal
soul. If Christianity had not drawn that moral with clear insight and
relentless logic Christianity would never have been a great force in the
world.

If any doubt is felt as to the really essential character of the
connection between cleanliness and the sexual impulse it may be
dispelled by the consideration that the association is by no
means confined to Christian Europe. If we go outside Europe and
even Christendom altogether, to the other side of the world, we
find it still well marked. The wantonness of the luxurious people
of Tahiti when first discovered by European voyagers is
notorious. The Areoi of Tahiti, a society largely constituted on
a basis of debauchery, is a unique institution so far as
primitive peoples are concerned. Cook, after giving one of the
earliest descriptions of this society and its objects at Tahiti
(Hawkesworth, _An Account of Voyages_, etc., 1775, vol. ii, p.
55), immediately goes on to describe the extreme and scrupulous
cleanliness of the people of Tahiti in every respect; they not
only bathed their bodies and clothes every day, but in all
respects they carried cleanliness to a higher point than even
"the politest assembly in Europe." Another traveler bears similar
testimony: "The inhabitants of the Society Isles are, among all
the nations of the South Seas, the most cleanly; and the better
sort of them carry cleanliness to a very great length"; they
bathe morning and evening in the sea, he remarks, and afterward
in fresh water to remove the particles of salt, wash their hands
before and after meals, etc. (J.R. Forster, "_Observations made
during a Voyage round the World_," 1798, p. 398.) And William
Ellis, in his detailed description of the people of Tahiti
(_Polynesian Researches_, 1832, vol. i, especially Chapters VI
and IX), while emphasizing their extreme cleanliness, every
person of every class bathing at least once or twice a day,
dwells on what he considers their unspeakable moral debasement;
"notwithstanding the apparent mildness of their disposition and
the cheerful vivacity of their conversation, no portion of the
human race was ever perhaps sunk lower in brutal licentiousness
and moral degradation."

After leaving Tahiti Cook went on to New Zealand. Here he found
that the people were more virtuous than at Tahiti, and also, he
found, less clean.

It is, however, a mistake to suppose that physical uncleanliness ruled
supreme through mediæval and later times. It is true that the eighteenth
century, which saw the birth of so much that marks our modern world,
witnessed a revival of the old ideal of bodily purity. But the struggle
between two opposing ideals had been carried on for a thousand years or
more before this. The Church, indeed, was in this matter founded on an
impregnable rock. But there never has been a time when influences outside
the Church have not found a shelter somewhere. Those traditions of the
classic world which Christianity threw aside as useless or worse quietly
reappeared. In no respect was this more notably the case than in regard to
the love of pure water and the cult of the bath. Islam adopted the
complete Roman bath, and made it an institution of daily life, a necessity
for all classes. Granada is the spot in Europe where to-day we find the
most exquisite remains of Mohammedan culture, and, though the fury of
Christian conquest dragged the harrow over the soil of Granada, even yet
streams and fountains spring up there and gush abundantly and one seldom
loses the sound of the plash of water. The flower of Christian chivalry
and Christian intelligence went to Palestine to wrest the Holy Sepulchre
from the hands of pagan Mohammedans. They found there many excellent
things which they had not gone out to seek, and the Crusaders produced a
kind of premature and abortive Renaissance, the shadow of lost classic
things reflected on Christian Europe from the mirror of Islam.

Yet it is worth while to point out, as bearing on the
associations of the bath here emphasized, that even in Islam we
may trace the existence of a religious attitude unfavorable to
the bath. Before the time of Mohammed there were no public baths
in Arabia, and it was and is believed that baths are specially
haunted by the djinn--the evil spirits. Mohammed himself was at
first so prejudiced against public baths that he forbade both men
and women to enter them. Afterward, however, he permitted men to
use them provided they wore a cloth round the loins, and women
also when they could not conveniently bathe at home. Among the
Prophet's sayings is found the assertion: "Whatever woman enters
a bath the devil is with her," and "All the earth is given to me
as a place of prayer, and as pure, except the burial ground and
the bath." (See, e.g., E.W. Lane, _Arabian Society in the Middle
Ages_, 1883, pp. 179-183.) Although, therefore, the bath, or
_hammam_, on grounds of ritual ablution, hygiene, and enjoyment
speedily became universally popular in Islam among all classes
and both sexes, Mohammed himself may be said to have opposed it.

Among the discoveries which the Crusaders made and brought home with them
one of the most notable was that of the bath, which in its more elaborate
forms seems to have been absolutely forgotten in Europe, though Roman
baths might everywhere have been found underground. All authorities seem
to be agreed in finding here the origin of the revival of the public bath.
It is to Rome first, and later to Islam, the lineal inheritor of classic
culture, that we owe the cult of water and of physical purity. Even to-day
the Turkish bath, which is the most popular of elaborate methods of
bathing, recalls by its characteristics and its name the fact that it is a
Mohammedan survival of Roman life.

From the twelfth century onward baths have repeatedly been introduced from
the East, and reintroduced afresh in slightly modified forms, and have
flourished with varying degrees of success. In the thirteenth century they
were very common, especially in Paris, and though they were often used,
more especially in Germany, by both sexes in common, every effort was made
to keep them orderly and respectable. These efforts were, however, always
unsuccessful in the end. A bath always tended in the end to become a
brothel, and hence either became unfashionable or was suppressed by the
authorities. It is sufficient to refer to the reputation in England of
"hot-houses" and "bagnios." It was not until toward the end of the
eighteenth century that it began to be recognized that the claims of
physical cleanliness were sufficiently imperative to make it necessary
that the fairly avoidable risks to morality in bathing should be avoided
and the unavoidable risks bravely incurred. At the present day, now that
we are accustomed to weave ingeniously together in the texture of our
lives the conflicting traditions of classic and Christian days, we have
almost persuaded ourselves that the pagan virtue of cleanliness comes next
after godliness, and we bathe, forgetful of the great moral struggle which
once went on around the bath. But we refrain from building ourselves
palaces to bathe in, and for the most part we bathe with exceeding
moderation.[23] It is probable that we may best harmonize our conflicting
traditions by rejecting not only the Christian glorification of dirt, but
also, save for definitely therapeutic purposes, the excessive heat,
friction, and stimulation involved by the classic forms of bathing. Our
reasonable ideal should render it easy and natural for every man, woman,
and child to have a simple bath, tepid in winter, cold in summer, all the
year round.

For the history of the bath in mediæval times and later Europe,
see A. Franklin, _Les Soins de Toilette_, in the _Vie Privée
d'Autrefois_ series; Rudeck, _Geschichte der öffentlichen
Sittlichkeit in Deutschland_; T. Wright, _The Homes of Other
Days_; E. Dühren, _Das Geschlechtsleben in England_, bd. 1.

Outside the Church, there was a greater amount of cleanliness
than we are sometimes apt to suppose. It may, indeed, be said
that the uncleanliness of holy men and women would have attracted
no attention if it had corresponded to the condition generally
prevailing. Before public baths were established bathing in
private was certainly practiced; thus Ordericus Vitalis, in
narrating the murder of Mabel, the Countess de Montgomery, in
Normandy in 1082, casually mentions that she was lying on the bed
after her bath (_Ecclesiastical History_, Book V, Chapter XIII).
In warm weather, it would appear, mediæval ladies bathed in
streams, as we may still see countrywomen do in Russia, Bohemia,
and occasionally nearer home. The statement of the historian
Michelet, therefore, that Percival, Iseult, and the other
ethereal personages of mediæval times "certainly never washed"
(_La Sorcière_, p. 110) requires some qualification.

In 1292 there were twenty-six bathing establishments in Paris,
and an attendant would go through the streets in the morning
announcing that they were ready. One could have a vapor bath only
or a hot bath to succeed it, as in the East. No woman of bad
reputation, leper, or vagabond was at this time allowed to
frequent the baths, which were closed on Sundays and feast-days.
By the fourteenth century, however, the baths began to have a
reputation for immorality, as well as luxury, and, according to
Dufour, the baths of Paris "rivaled those of imperial Rome: love,
prostitution, and debauchery attracted the majority to the
bathing establishments, where everything was covered by a decent
veil." He adds that, notwithstanding the scandal thus caused and
the invectives of preachers, all went to the baths, young and
old, rich and poor, and he makes the statement, which seems to
echo the constant assertion of the early Fathers, that "a woman
who frequented the baths returned home physically pure only at
the expense of her moral purity."

In Germany there was even greater freedom of manners in bathing,
though, it would seem, less real licentiousness. Even the
smallest towns had their baths, which were frequented by all
classes. As soon as the horn blew to announce that the baths were
ready all hastened along the street, the poorer folk almost
completely undressing themselves before leaving their homes.
Bathing was nearly always in common without any garment being
worn, women attendants commonly rubbed and massaged both sexes,
and the dressing room was frequently used by men and women in
common; this led to obvious evils. The Germans, as Weinhold
points out (_Die Deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter_, 1882, bd. ii,
pp. 112 et seq.), have been fond of bathing in the open air in
streams from the days of Tacitus and Cæsar until comparatively
modern times, when the police have interfered. It was the same in
Switzerland. Poggio, early in the sixteenth century, found it the
custom for men and women to bathe together at Baden, and said
that he seemed to be assisting at the _floralia_ of ancient Rome,
or in Plato's Republic. Sénancour, who quotes the passage (_De
l'Amour_, 1834, vol. i, p. 313), remarks that at the beginning of
the nineteenth century there was still great liberty at the Baden
baths.

Of the thirteenth century in England Thomas Wright (_Homes of
Other Days_, 1871, p. 271) remarks: "The practice of warm bathing
prevailed very generally in all classes of society, and is
frequently alluded to in the mediæval romances and stories. For
this purpose a large bathing-tub was used. People sometimes
bathed immediately after rising in the morning, and we find the
bath used after dinner and before going to bed. A bath was also
often prepared for a visitor on his arrival from a journey; and,
what seems still more singular, in the numerous stories of
amorous intrigues the two lovers usually began their interviews
by bathing together."

In England the association between bathing and immorality was
established with special rapidity and thoroughness. Baths were
here officially recognized as brothels, and this as early as the
twelfth century, under Henry II. These organized bath-brothels
were confined to Southwark, outside the walls of the city, a
quarter which was also given up to various sports and amusements.
At a later period, "hot-houses," bagnios, and hummums (the
eastern _hammam_) were spread all over London and remained
closely identified with prostitution, these names, indeed,
constantly tending to become synonymous with brothels. (T.
Wright, _Homes of Other Days_, 1871, pp. 494-496, gives an
account of them.)

In France the baths, being anathematized by both Catholics and
Huguenots, began to lose vogue and disappear. "Morality gained,"
remarks Franklin, "but cleanliness lost." Even the charming and
elegant Margaret of Navarre found it quite natural for a lady to
mention incidentally to her lover that she had not washed her
hands for a week. Then began an extreme tendency to use
cosmetics, essences, perfumes, and a fierce war with vermin, up
to the seventeenth century, when some progress was made, and
persons who desired to be very elegant and refined were
recommended to wash their faces "nearly every day." Even in 1782,
however, while a linen cloth was advised for the purpose of
cleaning the face and hands, the use of water was still somewhat
discountenanced. The use of hot and cold baths was now, however,
beginning to be established in Paris and elsewhere, and the
bathing establishments at the great European health resorts were
also beginning to be put on the orderly footing which is now
customary. When Casanova, in the middle of the eighteenth
century, went to the public baths at Berne he was evidently
somewhat surprised when he found that he was invited to choose
his own attendant from a number of young women, and when he
realized that these attendants were, in all respects, at the
disposition of the bathers. It is evident that establishments of
this kind were then already dying out, although it may be added
that the customs described by Casanova appear to have persisted
in Budapest and St. Petersburg almost or quite up to the present.
The great European public baths have long been above suspicion in
this respect (though homosexual practices are not quite
excluded), while it is well recognized that many kinds of hot
baths now in use produce a powerfully stimulating action upon the
sexual system, and patients taking such baths for medical
purposes are frequently warned against giving way to these
influences.

The struggle which in former ages went on around bathing
establishments has now been in part transferred to massage
establishments. Massage is an equally powerful stimulant to the
skin and the sexual sphere,--acting mainly by friction instead of
mainly by heat,--and it has not yet attained that position of
general recognition and popularity which, in the case of bathing
establishments, renders it bad policy to court disrepute.

Like bathing, massage is a hygienic and therapeutic method of
influencing the skin and subjacent tissues which, together with
its advantages, has certain concomitant disadvantages in its
liability to affect the sexual sphere. This influence is apt to
be experienced by individuals of both sexes, though it is perhaps
specially marked in women. Jouin (quoted in Paris _Journal de
Médecine_, April 23, 1893) found that of 20 women treated by
massage, of whom he made inquiries, 14 declared that they
experienced voluptuous sensations; 8 of these belonged to
respectable families; the other 6 were women of the _demimonde_
and gave precise details; Jouin refers in this connection to the
_aliptes_ of Rome. It is unnecessary to add that the
gynæcological massage introduced in recent years by the Swedish
teacher of gymnastics, Thure-Brandt, as involving prolonged
rubbing and kneading of the pelvic regions, "_pression glissante
du vagin_" etc. (_Massage Gynécologique_, by G. de Frumerie,
1897), whatever its therapeutic value, cannot fail in a large
proportion of cases to stimulate the sexual emotions. (Eulenburg
remarks that for sexual anæsthesia in women the Thure-Brandt
system of massage may "naturally" be recommended, _Sexuale
Neuropathie_, p. 78.) I have been informed that in London and
elsewhere massage establishments are sometimes visited by women
who seek sexual gratification by massage of the genital regions
by the _masseuse_.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] "_Dicens munditiam corporis atque vestitus animæ esse
immunditiam_"--St. Jerome, _Ad Eustochium Virginem_.

[22] With regard to the physiological mechanism by which bathing produces
its tonic and stimulating effects Woods Hutchinson has an interesting
discussion (Chapter VII) in his _Studies in Human and Comparative
Pathology_.

[23] Thus among the young women admitted to the Chicago Normal School to
be trained as teachers, Miss Lura Sanborn, the director of physical
training, states (_Doctor's Magazine_, December, 1900) that a bath once a
fortnight is found to be not unusual.

Summary--Fundamental Importance of Touch--The Skin the Mother of All the
Other Senses.

The sense of touch is so universally diffused over the whole skin, and in
so many various degrees and modifications, and it is, moreover, so truly
the Alpha and the Omega of affection, that a broken and fragmentary
treatment of the subject has been inevitable.

The skin is the archæological field of human and prehuman experience, the
foundation on which all forms of sensory perception have grown up, and as
sexual sensibility is among the most ancient of all forms of sensibility,
the sexual instinct is necessarily, in the main, a comparatively slightly
modified form of general touch sensibility. This primitive character of
the great region of tactile sensation, its vagueness and diffusion, the
comparatively unintellectual as well as unæsthetic nature of the mental
conceptions which arise on the tactile basis make it difficult to deal
precisely with the psychology of touch. The very same qualities, however,
serve greatly to heighten the emotional intensity of skin sensations. So
that, of all the great sensory fields, the field of touch is at once the
least intellectual and the most massively emotional. These qualities, as
well as its intimate and primitive association with the apparatus of
tumescence and detumescence, make touch the readiest and most powerful
channel by which the sexual sphere may be reached.

In disentangling the phenomena of tactile sensibility ticklishness has
been selected for special consideration as a kind of sensation, founded on
reflexes developing even before birth, which is very closely related to
sexual phenomena. It is, as it were, a play of tumescence, on which
laughter supervenes as a play of detumescence. It leads on to the more
serious phenomena of tumescence, and it tends to die out after
adolescence, at the period during which sexual relationships normally
begin. Such a view of ticklishness, as a kind of modesty of the skin,
existing merely to be destroyed, need only be regarded as one of its
aspects. Ticklishness certainly arose from a non-sexual starting-point,
and may well have protective uses in the young animal.

The readiness with which tactile sensibility takes on a sexual character
and forms reflex channels of communication with the sexual sphere proper
is illustrated by the existence of certain secondary sexual foci only
inferior in sexual excitability to the genital region. We have seen that
the chief of these normal foci are situated in the orificial regions where
skin and mucous membrane meet, and that the contact of any two orificial
regions between two persons of different sex brought together under
favorable conditions is apt, when prolonged, to produce a very intense
degree of sexual erethism. This is a normal phenomenon in so far as it is
a part of tumescence, and not a method of obtaining detumescence. The kiss
is a typical example of these contacts, while the nipple is of special
interest in this connection, because we are thereby enabled to bring the
psychology of lactation into intimate relationship with the psychology of
sexual love.

The extreme sensitiveness of the skin, the readiness with which its
stimulation reverberates into the sexual sphere, clearly brought out by
the present study, enable us to understand better a very ancient
contest--the moral struggle around the bath. There has always been a
tendency for the extreme cultivation of physical purity to lead on to the
excessive stimulation of the sexual sphere; so that the Christian ascetics
were entirely justified, on their premises, in fighting against the bath
and in directly or indirectly fostering a cult of physical uncleanliness.
While, however, in the past there has clearly been a general tendency for
the cult of physical purity to be associated with moral licentiousness,
and there are sufficient grounds for such an association, it is important
to remember that it is not an inevitable and fatal association; a
scrupulously clean person is by no means necessarily impelled to
licentiousness; a physically unclean person is by no means necessarily
morally pure. When we have eliminated certain forms of the bath which must
be regarded as luxuries rather than hygienic necessities, though they
occasionally possess therapeutic virtues, we have eliminated the most
violent appeals of the bath to the sexual impulse. So imperative are the
demands of physical purity now becoming, in general opinion, that such
small risks to moral purity as may still remain are constantly and wisely
disregarded, and the immoral traditions of the bath now, for the most
part, belong to the past.

SMELL.

The Primitiveness of Smell--The Anatomical Seat of the Olfactory
Centres--Predominance of Smell among the Lower Mammals--Its Diminished
Importance in Man--The Attention Paid to Odors by Savages.

The first more highly organized sense to arise on the diffused tactile
sensitivity of the skin is, in most cases, without doubt that of smell. At
first, indeed, olfactory sensibility is not clearly differentiated from
general tactile sensibility; the pit of thickened and ciliated epithelium
or the highly mobile antennæ which in many lower animals are sensitive to
odorous stimuli are also extremely sensitive to tactile stimuli; this is,
for instance, the case with the snail, in whom at the same time olfactive
sensibility seems to be spread over the whole body.[24] The sense of smell
is gradually specialized, and when taste also begins to develop a kind of
chemical sense is constituted. The organ of smell, however, speedily
begins to rise in importance as we ascend the zoölogical scale. In the
lower vertebrates, when they began to adopt a life on dry land, the sense
of smell seems to have been that part of their sensory equipment which
proved most useful under the new conditions, and it developed with
astonishing rapidity. Edinger finds that in the brain of reptiles the
"area olfactoria" is of enormous extent, covering, indeed, the greater
part of the cortex, though it may be quite true, as Herrick remarks, that,
while smell is preponderant, it is perhaps not correct to attribute an
exclusively olfactory tone to the cerebral activities of the _Sauropsida_
or even the _Ichthyopsida_. Among most mammals, however, in any case,
smell is certainly the most highly developed of the senses; it gives the
first information of remote objects that concern them; it gives the most
precise information concerning the near objects that concern them; it is
the sense in terms of which most of their mental operations must be
conducted and their emotional impulses reach consciousness. Among the apes
it has greatly lost importance and in man it has become almost
rudimentary, giving place to the supremacy of vision.

Prof. G. Elliot Smith, a leading authority on the brain, has well
summarized the facts concerning the predominance of the olfactory
region in the mammal brain, and his conclusions may be quoted. It
should be premised that Elliot Smith divides the brain into
rhinencephalon and neopallium. Rhinencephalon designates the
regions which are pre-eminently olfactory in function: the
olfactory bulb, its peduncle, the tuberculum olfactorium and
locus perforatus, the pyriform lobe, the paraterminal body, and
the whole hippocampal formation. The neopallium is the dorsal cap
of the brain, with frontal, parietal, and occipital areas,
comprehending all that part of the brain which is the seat of the
higher associative activities, reaching its fullest development
in man.

"In the early mammals the olfactory areas form by far the greater
part of the cerebral hemisphere, which is not surprising when it
is recalled that the forebrain is, in the primitive brain,
essentially an appendage, so to speak, of the smell apparatus.
When the cerebral hemisphere comes to occupy such a dominant
position in the brain it is perhaps not unnatural to find that
the sense of smell is the most influential and the chief source
of information to the animal; or, perhaps, it would be more
accurate to say that the olfactory sense, which conveys general
information to the animal such as no other sense can bring
concerning its prey (whether near or far, hidden or exposed), is
much the most serviceable of all the avenues of information to
the lowly mammal leading a terrestrial life, and therefore
becomes predominant; and its particular domain--the
forebrain--becomes the ruling portion of the nervous system.

"This early predominance of the sense of smell persists in most
mammals (unless an aquatic mode of life interferes and deposes
it: compare the _Cetacea, Sirenia_, and _Pinnipedia_, for
example) even though a large neopallium develops to receive
visual, auditory, tactile, and other impressions pouring into the
forebrain. In the _Anthropoidea_ alone of nonaquatic mammals the
olfactory regions undergo an absolute (and not only relative, as
in the _Carnivora_ and _Ungulata_) dwindling, which is equally
shared by the human brain, in common with those of the other
_Simiidæ_, the _Cercopithecidæ_, and the _Cebidæ_. But all the
parts of the rhinencephalon, which are so distinct in macrosmatic
mammals, can also be recognized in the human brain. The small
ellipsoidal olfactory bulb is moored, so to speak, on the
cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone by the olfactory nerves; so
that, as the place of attachment of the olfactory peduncle to the
expanding cerebral hemisphere becomes removed (as a result of the
forward extension of the hemisphere) progressively farther and
farther backward, the peduncle becomes greatly stretched and
elongated. And, as this stretching involves the gray matter
without lessening the number of nerve-fibres in the olfactory
tract, the peduncle becomes practically what it is usually
called--i.e., the olfactory 'tract.' The tuberculum olfactorium
becomes greatly reduced and at the same time flattened; so that
it is not easy to draw a line of demarcation between it and the
anterior perforated space. The anterior rhinal fissure, which is
present in the early human foetus, vanishes (almost, if not
altogether) in the adult. Part of the posterior rhinal fissure is
always present in the 'incisura temporalis,' and sometimes,
especially in some of the non-European races, the whole of the
posterior rhinal fissure is retained in that typical form which
we find in the anthropoid apes." (G. Elliot Smith, in
_Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological
Series of Comparative Anatomy Contained in the Museum of the
Royal College of Surgeons of England_, second edition, vol. ii.)
A full statement of Elliot Smith's investigations, with diagrams,
is given by Bullen, _Journal of Mental Science_, July, 1899. It
may be added that the whole subject of the olfactory centres has
been thoroughly studied by Elliot Smith, as well as by Edinger,
Mayer, and C.L. Herrick. In the _Journal of Comparative
Neurology_, edited by the last named, numerous discussions and
summaries bearing on the subject will be found from 1896 onward.
Regarding the primitive sense-organs of smell in the various
invertebrate groups some information will be found in A.B.
Griffiths's _Physiology of the Invertebrata_, Chapter XI.

The predominance of the olfactory area in the nervous system of the
vertebrates generally has inevitably involved intimate psychic
associations between olfactory stimuli and the sexual impulse. For most
mammals not only are all sexual associations mainly olfactory, but the
impressions received by this sense suffice to dominate all others. An
animal not only receives adequate sexual excitement from olfactory
stimuli, but those stimuli often suffice to counterbalance all the
evidence of the other senses.

We may observe this very well in the case of the dog. Thus, a
young dog, well known to me, who had never had connection with a
bitch, but was always in the society of its father, once met the
latter directly after the elder dog had been with a bitch. He
immediately endeavored to behave toward the elder dog, in spite
of angry repulses, exactly as a dog behaves toward a bitch in
heat. The messages received by the sense of smell were
sufficiently urgent not only to set the sexual mechanism in
action, but to overcome the experiences of a lifetime. There is
an interesting chapter on the sense of smell in the mental life
of the dog in Giessler's _Psychologie des Geruches_, 1894,
Chapter XI, Passy (in the appendix to his memoir on olfaction,
_L'Année Psychologique_, 1895) gives the result of some
interesting experiments as to the effects of perfume on dogs;
civet and castoreum were found to have the most powerfully
exciting effect.

The influences of smell are equally omnipotent in the sexual life
of many insects. Thus, Féré has found that in cockchafers sexual
coupling failed to take place when the antennæ, which are the
organs of smell, were removed; he also found that males, after
they had coupled with females, proved sexually attractive to
other males (_Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie_, May 21,
1898). Féré similarly found that, in a species of _Bombyx_, males
after contact with females sometimes proved attractive to other
males, although no abnormal relationships followed. (_Soc. de
Biol_, July 30, 1898.)

With the advent of the higher apes, and especially of man, all this has
been changed. The sense of smell, indeed, still persists universally and
it is still also exceedingly delicate, though often neglected.[25] It is,
moreover, a useful auxiliary in the exploration of the external world,
for, in contrast to the very few sensations furnished to us by touch and
by taste, we are acquainted with a vast number of smells, though the
information they give us is frequently vague. An experienced perfumer,
says Piesse, will have two hundred odors in his laboratory and can
distinguish them all. To a sensitive nose nearly everything smells. Passy
goes so far as to state that he has "never met with any object that is
really inodorous when one pays attention to it, not even excepting glass,"
and, though we can scarcely accept this statement absolutely,--especially
in view of the careful experiments of Ayrton, which show that, contrary
to a common belief, metals when perfectly clean and free from traces of
contact with the skin or with salt solutions have no smell,--odor is still
extremely widely diffused. This is especially the case in hot countries,
and the experiments of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition on the
sense of smell of the Papuans were considerably impeded by the fact that
at Torres Straits everything, even water, seemed to have a smell. Savages
are often accused more or less justly of indifference to bad odors. They
are very often, however, keenly alive to the significance of smells and
their varieties, though it does not appear that the sense of smell is
notably more developed in savage than in civilized peoples. Odors also
continue to play a part in the emotional life of man, more especially in
hot countries. Nevertheless both in practical life and in emotional life,
in science and in art, smell is, at the best, under normal conditions,
merely an auxiliary. If the sense of smell were abolished altogether the
life of mankind would continue as before, with little or no sensible
modification, though the pleasures of life, and especially of eating and
drinking, would be to some extent diminished.

In New Ireland, Duffield remarks (_Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, 1886, p. 118), the natives have a very keen sense of
smell; unusual odors are repulsive to them, and "carbolic acid
drove them wild."

The New Caledonians, according to Foley (_Bulletin de la Société
d'Anthropologie_, November 6, 1879), only like the smells of meat
and fish which are becoming "high," like _popoya_, which smells
of fowl manure, and _kava_, of rotten eggs. Fruits and vegetables
which are beginning to go bad seem the best to them, while the
fresh and natural odors which we prefer seem merely to say to
them: "We are not yet eatable." (A taste for putrefying food,
common among savages, by no means necessarily involves a distaste
for agreeable scents, and even among Europeans there is a
widespread taste for offensively smelling and putrid foods,
especially cheese and game.)

The natives of Torres Straits were carefully examined by Dr. C.S.
Myers with regard to their olfactory acuteness and olfactory
preferences. It was found that acuteness was, if anything,
slightly greater than among Europeans. This appeared to be
largely due to the careful attention they pay to odors. The
resemblances which they detected among different odorous
substances were frequently found to rest on real chemical
affinities. The odors they were observed to dislike most
frequently were asafoetida, valerianic acid, and civet, the last
being regarded as most repulsive of all on account of its
resemblance to fæcal odor, which these people regard with intense
disgust. Their favorite odors were musk, thyme, and especially
violet. (_Report of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to
Torres Straits_, vol. ii, Part II, 1903.)

In Australia Lumholtz (_Among Cannibals_, p. 115) found that the
blacks had a keener sense of smell than he possessed.

In New Zealand the Maoris, as W. Colenso shows, possessed,
formerly at all events, a very keen sense of smell or else were
very attentive to smell, and their taste as regarded agreeable
and disagreeable odors corresponded very closely to European
taste, although it must be added that some of their common
articles of food possessed a very offensive odor. They are not
only sensitive to European perfumes, but possessed various
perfumes of their own, derived from plants and possessing a
pleasant, powerful, and lasting odor; the choicest and rarest was
the gum of the _taramea_ (_Aciphylla Colensoi_), which was
gathered by virgins after the use of prayers and charms. Sir
Joseph Banks noted that Maori chiefs wore little bundles of
perfumes around their necks, and Cook made the same observation
concerning the young women. References to the four chief Maori
perfumes are contained in a stanza which is still often hummed to
express satisfaction, and sung by a mother to her child:--

"My little neck-satchel of sweet-scented moss,
My little neck-satchel of fragrant fern,
My little neck-satchel of odoriferous gum,
My sweet-smelling neck-locket of sharp-pointed _taramea_."

In the summer season the sleeping houses of Maori chiefs were
often strewed with a large, sweet-scented, flowering grass of
powerful odor. (W. Colenso, _Transactions of the New Zealand
Institute_, vol. xxiv, reprinted in _Nature_, November 10, 1892.)

Javanese women rub themselves with a mixture of chalk and strong
essence which, when rubbed off, leaves a distinct perfume on the
body. (Stratz, _Die Frauenkleidung_, p. 84.)

The Samoans, Friedländer states (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_,
1899, p. 52), are very fond of fragrant and aromatic odors. He
gives a list of some twenty odorous plants which they use, more
especially as garlands for the head and neck, including
ylang-ylang and gardenia; he remarks that of one of these plants
(cordyline) he could not himself detect the odor.

The Nicobarese, Man remarks (_Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, 1889, p. 377), like the natives of New Zealand,
particularly dislike the smell of carbolic acid. Both young men
and women are very partial to scents; the former say they find
their use a certain passport to the favor of their wives, and
they bring home from the jungle the scented leaves of a certain
creeper to their sweethearts and wives.

Swahili women devote much attention to perfuming themselves. When
a woman wishes to make herself desirable she anoints herself all
over with fragrant ointments, sprinkles herself with rose-water,
puts perfume into her clothes, strews jasmine flowers on her bed
as well as binding them round her neck and waist, and smokes
_ûdi_, the perfumed wood of the aloe; "every man is glad when his
wife smells of _ûdi_" (Velten, _Sitten und Gebraüche der
Suaheli_, pp. 212-214).

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Emile Yung, "Le Sens Olfactif de l'Escargot (Helix Pomata),"
_Archives de Psychologie_, November, 1903.

[25] The sensitiveness of smell in man generally exceeds that of chemical
reaction or even of spectral analysis; see Passy, _L'Année Psychologique_,
second year, 1895, p. 380.

II.

Rise of the Study of Olfaction--Cloquet--Zwaardemaker--The Theory of
Smell--The Classification of Odors--The Special Characteristics of
Olfactory Sensation in Man--Smell as the Sense of Imagination--Odors as
Nervous Stimulants--Vasomotor and Muscular Effects--Odorous Substances as
Drugs.

During the eighteenth century a great impetus was given to the
physiological and psychological study of the senses by the philosophical
doctrines of Locke and the English school generally which then prevailed
in Europe. These thinkers had emphasized the immense importance of the
information derived through the senses in building up the intellect, so
that the study of all the sensory channels assumed a significance which it
had never possessed before. The olfactory sense fully shared in the
impetus thus given to sensory investigation. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century a distinguished French physician, Hippolyte Cloquet, a
disciple of Cabanis, devoted himself more especially to this subject.
After publishing in 1815 a preliminary work, he issued in 1821 his
_Osphrésiologie, ou Traité des odeurs, du sens et des organes de
l'Olfaction_, a complete monograph on the anatomy, physiology, psychology,
and pathology of the olfactory organ and its functions, and a work that
may still be consulted with profit, if indeed it can even yet be said to
be at every point superseded. After Cloquet's time the study of the sense
of smell seems to have fallen into some degree of discredit. For more than
half a century no important progress was made in this field. Serious
investigators seemed to have become shy of the primitive senses generally,
and the subject of smell was mainly left to those interested in "curious"
subjects. Many interesting observations were, however, incidentally made;
thus Laycock, who was a pioneer in so many by-paths of psychology and
anthropology, showed a special interest in the olfactory sense, and
frequently touched on it in his _Nervous Diseases of Women_ and
elsewhere. The writer who more than any other has in recent years restored
the study of the sense of smell from a by-path to its proper position as a
highway for investigation is without doubt Professor Zwaardemaker, of
Utrecht. The invention of his first olfactometer in 1888 and the
appearance in 1895 of his great work _Die Physiologie des Geruchs_ have
served to give the physiology of the sense of smell an assured status and
to open the way anew for much fruitful investigation, while a number of
inquirers in many countries have had their attention directed to the
elucidation of this sense.

Notwithstanding, however, the amount of work which has been done in this
field during recent years, it cannot be said that the body of assured
conclusions so far reached is large. The most fundamental principles of
olfactory physiology and psychology are still somewhat vague and
uncertain. Although sensations of smell are numerous and varied, in this
respect approaching the sensations of vision and hearing, smell still
remains close to touch in the vagueness of its messages (while the most
sensitive of the senses, remarks Passy, it is the least precise), the
difficulty of classifying them, the impossibility of so controlling them
as to found upon them any art. It seems better, therefore, not to attempt
to force the present study of a special aspect of olfaction into any
general scheme which may possibly not be really valid.

The earliest and most general tendency in regard to the theory of
smell was to regard it as a kind of chemical sense directly
stimulated by minute particles of solid substance. A vibratory
theory of smell, however, making it somewhat analogous to
hearing, easily presents itself. When I first began the study of
physiology in 1881, a speculation of this kind presented itself
to my mind. Long before Philipp von Walther, a professor at
Landshut, had put forward a dynamic theory of olfaction
(_Physiologie des Menschen_, 1807-8, vol. ii, p. 278). "It is a
purely dynamic operation of the odorous substance in the
olfactory organ," he stated. Odor is conveyed by the air, he
believed, in the same way as heat. It must be added that his
reasons for this theory will not always bear examination. More
recently a similar theory has been seriously put forward in
various quarters. Sir William Ramsay tentatively suggested such a
theory (_Nature_, vol. xxv, p. 187) in analogy with light and
sound. Haycraft (_Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_,
1883-87, and _Brain_, 1887-88), largely starting from
Mendelieff's law of periodicity, similarly sought to bring smell
into line with the higher senses, arguing that molecules with the
same vibration have the same smell. Rutherford (_Nature_, August
11, 1892, p. 343), attaching importance to the evidence brought
forward by von Brunn showing that the olfactory cells terminate
in very delicate short hairs, also stated his belief that the
different qualities of smell result from differences in the
frequency and form of the vibrations initiated by the action of
the chemical molecules on these olfactory cells, though he
admitted that such a conception involved a very subtle conception
of molecular vibration. Vaschide and Van Melle (Paris Academy of
Sciences, December 26, 1899) have, again, argued that smell is
produced by rays of short wave-lengths, analogous to light-rays,
Röntgen rays, etc. Chemical action is however, a very important
factor in the production of odors; this has been well shown by
Ayrton (_Nature_, September 8, 1898). We seem to be forced in the
direction of a chemico-vibratory theory, as pointed out by
Southerden (_Nature_, March 26, 1903), the olfactory cells being
directly stimulated, not by the ordinary vibrations of the
molecules, but by the agitations accompanying chemical changes.

The vibratory hypothesis of the action of odors has had some
influence on the recent physiologists who have chiefly occupied
themselves with olfaction. "It is probable," Zwaardemaker writes
(_L'Année Psychologique_, 1898), "that aroma is a
physico-chemical attribute of the molecules"; he points out that
there is an intimate analogy between color and odor, and remarks
that this analogy leads us to suppose in an aroma ether
vibrations of which the period is determined by the structure of
the molecule.

Since the physiology of olfaction is yet so obscure it is not
surprising that we have no thoroughly scientific classification
of smells, notwithstanding various ambitious attempts to reach a
classification. The classification adopted by Zwaardemaker is
founded on the ancient scheme of Linnæus, and may here be
reproduced:--

I. Ethereal odors (chiefly esters; Rimmel's fruity series).

II. Aromatic odors (terpenes, camphors, and the spicy,
herbaceous, rosaceous, and almond series; the chemical types are
well determined: cineol, eugenol, anethol, geraniol,
benzaldehyde).

III. The balsamic odors (chiefly aldehydes, Rimmel's jasmin,
violet, and balsamic series, with the chemical types: terpineol,
ionone, vanillin).

IV. The ambrosiacal odors (ambergris and musk).

V. The alliaceous odors, with the cacodylic group (asafoetida,
ichthyol, etc.).

VI. Empyreumatic odors.

VII. Valerianaceous odors (Linnæus's _Odores hircini_, the capryl
group, largely composed of sexual odors).

VIII. Narcotic odors (Linnæus's _Odores tetri_).

IX. Stenches.

A valuable and interesting memoir, "Revue Générale sur les
Sensations Olfactives," by J. Passy, the chief French authority
on this subject, will be found in the second volume of _L'Année
Psychologique_, 1895. In the fifth issue of the same year-book
(for 1898) Zwaardemaker presents a full summary of his work and
views, "Les Sensations Olfactives, leurs Combinaisons et leurs
Compensations." A convenient, but less authoritative, summary of
the facts of normal and pathological olfaction will be found in a
little volume of the "Actualités Médicales" series by Dr. Collet,
_L'Odorat et ses Troubles_, 1904. In a little book entitled
_Wegweiser zu einer Psychologie des Geruches_ (1894) Giessler has
sought to outline a psychology of smell, but his sketch can only
be regarded as tentative and provisional.

At the outset, nevertheless, it seems desirable that we should at least
have some conception of the special characteristics which mark the great
and varied mass of sensations reaching the brain through the channel of
the olfactory organ. The main special character of olfactory images seems
to be conditioned by the fact that they are intermediate in character
between those of touch or taste and those of sight or sound, that they
have much of the vagueness of the first and something of the richness and
variety of the second. Æsthetically, also, they occupy an intermediate
position between the higher and the lower senses.[26] They are, at the
same time, less practically useful than either the lower or the higher
senses. They furnish us with a great mass of what we may call
by-sensations, which are of little practical use, but inevitably become
intimately mixed with the experiences of life by association and thus
acquire an emotional significance which is often very considerable. Their
emotional force, it may well be, is connected with the fact that their
anatomical seat is the most ancient part of the brain. They lie in a
remote almost disused storehouse of our minds and show the fascination or
the repulsiveness of all vague and remote things. It is for this reason
that they are--to an extent that is remarkable when we consider that they
are much more precise than touch sensations--subject to the influence of
emotional associations. The very same odor may be at one moment highly
pleasant, at the next moment highly unpleasant, in accordance with the
emotional attitude resulting from its associations. Visual images have no
such extreme flexibility; they are too definite to be so easily
influenced. Our feelings about the beauty of a flower cannot oscillate so
easily or so far as may our feelings about the agreeableness of its odor.
Our olfactory experiences thus institute a more or less continuous series
of by-sensations accompanying us through life, of no great practical
significance, but of considerable emotional significance from their
variety, their intimacy, their associational facility, their remote
ancestral reverberations through our brains.

It is the existence of these characteristics--at once so vague and so
specific, so useless and so intimate--which led various writers to
describe the sense of smell as, above all others, the sense of
imagination. No sense has so strong a power of suggestion, the power of
calling up ancient memories with a wider and deeper emotional
reverberation, while at the same time no sense furnishes impressions which
so easily change emotional color and tone, in harmony with the recipient's
general attitude. Odors are thus specially apt both to control the
emotional life and to become its slaves. With the use of incense religions
have utilized the imaginative and symbolical virtues of fragrance. All the
legends of the saints have insisted on the odor of sanctity that exhales
from the bodies of holy persons, especially at the moment of death. Under
the conditions of civilization these primitive emotional associations of
odor tend to be dispersed, but, on the other hand, the imaginative side of
the olfactory sense becomes accentuated, and personal idiosyncrasies of
all kinds tend to manifest themselves in the sphere of smell.

Rousseau (in _Emile_, Bk. II) regarded smell as the sense of the
imagination. So, also, at an earlier period, it was termed
(according to Cloquet) by Cardano. Cloquet frequently insisted on
the qualities of odors which cause them to appeal to the
imagination; on their irregular and inconstant character; on
their power of intoxicating the mind on some occasions; on the
curious individual and racial preferences in the matter of odors.
He remarked on the fact that the Persians employed asafoetida as
a seasoning, while valerian was accounted a perfume in antiquity.
(Cloquet, _Osphrésiologie_, pp. 28, 45, 71, 112.) It may be
added, as a curious example familiar to most people of the
dependence of the emotional tone of a smell on its associations,
that, while the exhalations of other people's bodies are
ordinarily disagreeable to us, such is not the case with our own;
this is expressed in the crude and vigorous dictum of the
Elizabethan poet, Marston, "Every man's dung smell sweet i' his
own nose." There are doubtless many implications, moral as well
as psychological, in that statement.

The modern authorities on olfaction, Passy and Zwaardemaker, both
alike insist on the same characteristics of the sense of smell:
its extreme acuity and yet its vagueness. "We live in a world of
odor," Zwaardemaker remarks (_L'Année Psychologique_, 1898, p.
203), "as we live in a world of light and of sound. But smell
yields us no distinct ideas grouped in regular order, still less
that are fixed in the memory as a grammatical discipline.
Olfactory sensations awake vague and half-understood perceptions,
which are accompanied by very strong emotion. The emotion
dominates us, but the sensation which was the cause of it remains
unperceived." Even in the same individual there are wide
variations in the sensitiveness to odors at different times, more
especially as regards faint odors; Passy (_L'Année
Psychologique_, 1895, p. 387) brings forward some observations on
this point.

Maudsley noted the peculiarly suggestive power of odors; "there
are certain smells," he remarked, "which never fail to bring back
to me instantly and visibly scenes of my boyhood"; many of us
could probably say the same. Another writer (E. Dillon, "A
Neglected Sense," _Nineteenth Century_, April, 1894) remarks that
"no sense has a stronger power of suggestion."

Ribot has made an interesting investigation as to the prevalence
and nature of the emotional memory of odors (_Psychology of the
Emotions_, Chapter XI). By "emotional memory" is meant the
spontaneous or voluntary revivability of the image, olfactory or
other. (For the general question, see an article by F. Pillon,
"La Mémoire Affective, son Importance Théorique et Pratique,"
_Revue Philosophique_, February, 1901; also Paulhan, "Sur la
Mémoire Affective," _Revue Philosophique_, December, 1902 and
January, 1903.) Ribot found that 40 per cent. of persons are
unable to revive any such images of taste or smell; 48 per cent,
could revive some; 12 per cent, declared themselves capable of
reviving all, or nearly all, at pleasure. In some persons there
is no necessary accompanying revival of visual or tactile
representations, but in the majority the revived odor ultimately
excites a corresponding visual image. The odors most frequently
recalled were pinks, musk, violets, heliotrope, carbolic acid,
the smell of the country, of grass, etc. Piéron (_Revue
Philosophique_, December, 1902) has described the special power
possessed by vague odors, in his own case, of evoking ancient
impressions.

Dr. J.N. Mackenzie (_American Journal of the Medical Sciences_,
January, 1886) considers that civilization exerts an influence in
heightening or encouraging the influence of olfaction as it
affects our emotions and judgment, and that, in the same way, as
we ascend the social scale the more readily our minds are
influenced and perhaps perverted by impressions received through
the sense of smell.

Odors are powerful stimulants to the whole nervous system, causing, like
other stimulants, an increase of energy which, if excessive or prolonged,
leads to nervous exhaustion. Thus, it is well recognized in medicine that
the aromatics containing volatile oils (such as anise, cinnamon,
cardamoms, cloves, coriander, and peppermint) are antispasmodics and
anæsthetics, and that they stimulate digestion, circulation, and the
nervous system, in large doses producing depression. The carefully
arranged plethysmographic experiments of Shields, at the Johns Hopkins
University, have shown that olfactory sensations, by their action on the
vasomotor system, cause an increase of blood in the brain and sometimes in
addition stimulation of the heart; musk, wintergreen, wood violet, and
especially heliotrope were found to act strongly in these ways.[27]

Féré's experiments with the dynamometer and the ergograph have greatly
contributed to illustrate the stimulating effects of odors. Thus, he found
that smelling musk suffices to double muscular effort. With a number of
odorous substances he has found that muscular work is temporarily
heightened; when taste stimulation was added the increase of energy,
notably when using lemon was "colossal." A kind of "sensorial
intoxication" could be produced by the inhalation of odors and the whole
system stimulated to greater activity; the visual acuity was increased,
and electric and general excitability heightened.[28] Such effects may be
obtained in perfectly healthy persons, though both Shields and Féré have
found that in highly nervous persons the effects are liable to be much
greater. It is doubtless on this account that it is among civilized
peoples that attention is chiefly directed to perfumes, and that under the
conditions of modern life the interest in olfaction and its study has been
revived.

It is the genuinely stimulant qualities of odorous substances which led to
the widespread use of the more potent among them by ancient physicians,
and has led a few modern physicians to employ them still. Thus, vanilla,
according to Eloy, deserves to be much more frequently used
therapeutically than it is, on account of its excitomotor properties; he
states that its qualities as an excitant of sexual desire have long been
recognized and that Fonssagrives used to prescribe it for sexual
frigidity.[29]

FOOTNOTES:

[26] The opinions of psychologists concerning the æsthetic significance of
smell, not on the whole very favorable, are brought together and discussed
by J.V. Volkelt, "Der Æsthetische Wert der niederen Sinne," _Zeitschrift
für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane_, 1902, ht. 3.

[27] T.E. Shields, "The Effect of Odors, etc., upon the Blood-flow,"
_Journal of Experimental Medicine_, vol. i, November, 1896. In France, O.
Henry and Tardif have made somewhat similar experiments on respiration and
circulation. See the latter's _Les Odeurs et les Parfums_, Chapter III.

[28] Féré, _Sensation et Mouvement_, Chapter VI; ib., _Comptes Rendus de
la Société de Biologie_, November 3, December 15 and 22, 1900.

[29] Eloy, art. "Vanille," _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences
Médicales_.

III.

The Specific Body Odors of Various Peoples--The Negro, etc.--The
European--The Ability to Distinguish Individuals by Smell--The Odor of
Sanctity--The Odor of Death--The Odors of Different Parts of the Body--The
Appearance of Specific Odors at Puberty--The Odors of Sexual
Excitement--The Odors of Menstruation--Body Odors as a Secondary Sexual
Character--The Custom of Salutation by Smell--The Kiss--Sexual Selection
by Smell--The Alleged Association between Size of Nose and Sexual
Vigor--The Probably Intimate Relationship between the Olfactory and
Genital Spheres--Reflex Influences from the Nose--Reflex Influences from
the Genital Sphere--Olfactory Hallucinations in Insanity as Related to
Sexual States--The Olfactive Type--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.

In approaching the specifically sexual aspect of odor in the human species
we may start from the fundamental fact--a fact we seek so far as possible
to disguise in our ordinary social relations--that all men and women are
odorous. This is marked among all races. The powerful odor of many, though
not all, negroes is well known; it is by no means due to uncleanly habits,
and Joest remarks that it is even increased by cleanliness, which opens
the pores of the skin; according to Sir H. Johnston, it is most marked in
the armpits and is stronger in men than in women. Pruner Bey describes it
as "ammoniacal and rancid; it is like the odor of the he-goat." The odor
varies not only individually, but according to the tribe; Castellani
states that the negress of the Congo has merely a slight "_goût de
noisette_" which is agreeable rather than otherwise. Monbuttu women,
according to Parke, have a strong Gorgonzola perfume, and Emin told Parke
that he could distinguish the members of different tribes by their
characteristic odor. In the same way the Nicobarese, according to Man, can
distinguish a member of each of the six tribes of the archipelago by
smell. The odor of Australian blacks is less strong than that of negroes
and has been described as of a phosphoric character. The South American
Indians, d'Orbigny stated, have an odor stronger than that of Europeans,
though not as strong as most negroes; it is marked, Latcham states, even
among those who, like the Araucanos, bathe constantly. The Chinese have a
musky odor. The odor of many peoples is described as being of garlic.[30]

A South Sea Islander, we are told by Charles de Varigny, on coming to
Sydney and seeing the ladies walking about the streets and apparently
doing nothing, expressed much astonishment, adding, with a gesture of
contempt, "and they have no smell!" It is by no means true, however, that
Europeans are odorless. They are, indeed, considerably more odorous than
are many other races,--for instance, the Japanese,--and there is doubtless
some association between the greater hairiness of Europeans and their
marked odor, since the sebaceous glands are part of the hair apparatus. A
Japanese anthropologist, Adachi, has published an interesting study on the
odor of Europeans,[31] which he describes as a strong and pungent
smell,--sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter,--of varying strength in
different individuals, absent in children and the aged, and having its
chief focus in the armpits, which, however carefully they are washed,
immediately become odorous again. Adachi has found that the sweat-glands
are larger in Europeans than in the Japanese, among whom a strong personal
odor is so uncommon that "armpit stink" is a disqualification for the
army. It is certainly true that the white races smell less strongly than
most of the dark races, odor seeming to be correlated to some extent with
intensity of pigmentation, as well as with hairiness; but even the most
scrupulously clean Europeans all smell. This fact may not always be
obvious to human nostrils, apart from intimate contact, but it is well
known to dogs, to whom their masters are recognizable by smell. When Hue
traveled in Tibet in Chinese disguise he was not detected by the natives,
but the dogs recognized him as a foreigner by his smell and barked at him.
Many Chinese can tell by smell when a European has been in a room.[32]
There are, however, some Europeans who can recognize and distinguish their
friends by smell. The case has been recorded of a man who with bandaged
eyes could recognize his acquaintances, at the distance of several paces,
the moment they entered the room. In another case a deaf and blind mute
woman in Massachusetts knew all her acquaintances by smell, and could sort
linen after it came from the wash by the odor alone. Governesses have been
known to be able when blindfolded to recognize the ownership of their
pupil's garments by smell; such a case is known to me. Such odor is
usually described as being agreeable, but not one person in fifty, it is
stated, is able to distinguish it with sufficient precision to use it as a
method of recognition. Among some races, however this aptitude would
appear to be better developed. Dr. C.S. Myers at Sarawak noted that his
Malay boy sorted the clean linen according to the skin-odor of the
wearer.[33] Chinese servants are said to do the same, as well as
Australians and natives of Luzon.[34]

Although the distinctively individual odor of most persons is not
sufficiently marked to be generally perceptible, there are cases
in which it is more distinct to all nostrils. The most famous
case of this kind is that of Alexander the Great, who, according
to Plutarch, exhaled so sweet an odor that his tunics were soaked
with aromatic perfume (_Convivalium Disputationum_, lib. I,
quest. 6). Malherbe, Cujas, and Haller are said to have diffused
a musky odor. The agreeable odor of Walt Whitman has been
remarked by Kennedy and others. The perfume exhaled by many holy
men and women, so often noted by ancient writers (discussed by
Görres in the second volume of his _Christliche Mystik_) and
which has entered into current phraseology as a merely
metaphorical "odor of sanctity," was doubtless due, as Hammond
first pointed out, to abnormal nervous conditions, for it is well
known that such conditions affect the odor, and in insanity, for
instance, the presence is noted of bodily odors which have
sometimes even been considered of diagnostic importance. J.B.
Friedreich, _Allgemeine Diagnostik der Psychischen Krankheiten_,
second edition, 1832, pp. 9-10, quotes passages from various
authors on this point, which he accepts; various writers of more
recent date have made similar observations.

The odor of sanctity was specially noted at death, and was
doubtless confused with the _odor mortis_, which frequently
precedes death and by some is regarded as an almost certain
indication of its approach. In the _British Medical Journal_, for
May and June, 1898, will be found letters from several
correspondents substantiating this point. One of these
correspondents (Dr. Tuckey, of Tywardwreath, Cornwall) mentions
that he has in Cornwall often seen ravens flying over houses in
which persons lay dying, evidently attracted by a characteristic
odor.

It must be borne in mind, however, that, while every person has, to a
sensitive nose, a distinguishing odor, we must regard that odor either as
but one of the various sensations given off by the body, or else as a
combination of two or more of these emanations. The body in reality gives
off a number of different odors. The most important of these are: (1) the
general skin odor, a faint, but agreeable, fragrance often to be detected
on the skin even immediately after washing; (2) the smell of the hair and
scalp; (3) the odor of the breath; (4) the odor of the armpit; (5) the
odor of the feet; (6) the perineal odor; (7) in men the odor of the
preputial smegma; (8) in women the odor of the mons veneris, that of
vulvar smegma, that of vaginal mucus, and the menstrual odor. All these
are odors which may usually be detected, though sometimes only in a very
faint degree, in healthy and well-washed persons under normal conditions.
It is unnecessary here to take into account the special odors of various
secretions and excretions.[35]

It is a significant fact, both as regards the ancestral sexual connections
of the body odors and their actual sexual associations to-day, that, as
Hippocrates long ago noted, it is not until puberty that they assume their
adult characteristics. The infant, the adult, the aged person, each has
his own kind of smell, and, as Monin remarks, it might be possible, within
certain limits, to discover the age of a person by his odor. Jorg in 1832
pointed out that in girls the appearance of a specific smell of the
excreta indicates the establishment of puberty, and Kaan, in his
_Psychopathia Sexualis_, remarked that at puberty "the sweat gives out a
more acrid odor resembling musk." In both sexes puberty, adolescence,
early manhood and womanhood are marked by a gradual development of the
adult odor of skin and excreta, in general harmony with the secondary
sexual development of hair and pigment. Venturi, indeed, has, not without
reason, described the odor of the body as a secondary sexual
character.[36] It may be added that, as is the case with the pigment in
various parts of the body in women, some of these odors tend to become
exaggerated in sympathy with sexual and other emotional states.

The odor of the infant is said to be of butyric acid; that of old
people to resemble dry leaves. 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. Grimaldi
states that it is as of rancid butter; others say it resembles
chloroform. It is said to be sometimes perceptible for a distance
of several feet and to last for several hours after coitus.
(Various quotations are given by Gould and Pyle, _Anomalies and
Curiosities of Medicine_, section on "Human Odors," pp. 397-403.)
St. Philip Neri is said to have been able to recognize a chaste
man by smell.

During menstruation girls and young women frequently give off an
odor which is quite distinct from that of the menstrual fluid,
and is specially marked in the breath, which may smell of
chloroform or violets. Pouchet (confirmed by Raciborski, _Traité
de la Menstruation_, 1868, p. 74) stated that about a day before
the onset of menstruation a characteristic smell is exuded.
Menstruating girls are also said sometimes to give off a smell of
leather. Aubert, of Lyons (as quoted by Galopin), describes the
odor of the skin of a woman during menstruation as an agreeable
aromatic or acidulous perfume of chloroform character. By some
this is described as emanating especially from the armpits.
Sandras (quoted by Raciborski) knew a lady who could always tell
by a sensation of faintness and _malaise_--apparently due to a
sensation of smell--when she was in contact with a menstruating
woman. I am acquainted with a man, having strong olfactory
sympathies and antipathies, who detects the presence of
menstruation by smell. It is said that Hortense Baré, who
accompanied her lover, the botanist Commerson, to the Pacific
disguised as a man, was recognized by the natives as a woman by
means of smell.

Women, like men, frequently give out an odor during coitus or
strong sexual excitement. This odor may be entirely different
from that normally emanating from the woman, of an acid or
hircine character, and sufficiently strong to remain in a room
for a considerable period. Many of the ancient medical writers
(as quoted by Schurigius, _Parthenologia_, p. 286) described the
goaty smell produced by venery, especially in women; they
regarded it as specially marked in harlots and in the newly
married, and sometimes even considered it a certain sign of
defloration. The case has been recorded of a woman who emitted a
rose odor for two days after coitus (McBride, quoted by Kiernan
in an interesting summary, "Odor in Pathology," _Doctor's
Magazine_, December, 1900). There was, it is said (_Journal des
Savans_ 1684, p. 39, quoting from the _Journal d'Angleterre_) a
monk in Prague who could recognize by smell the chastity of the
women who approached him. (This monk, it is added, when he died,
was composing a new science of odors.)

Gustav Klein (as quoted by Adler, _Die Mangelhafte
Geschlechtsempfindungen des Weibes_, p. 25) argues that the
special function of the glands at the vulvar orifice--the
_glandulæ vestibulares majores_--is to give out an odorous
secretion to act as an attraction to the male, this relic of
sexual periodicity no longer, however, playing an important part
in the human species. The vulvar secretion, however, it may be
added, still has a more aromatic odor than the vaginal secretion,
with its simple mucous odor, very clearly perceived during
parturition.

It may be added that we still know extremely little concerning
the sexual odors of women among primitive peoples. Ploss and
Bartels are only able to bring forward (_Das Weib_, 1901, bd. 1,
p. 218) a statement concerning the women of New Caledonia, who,
according to Moncelon, when young and ardent, give out during
coitus a powerful odor which no ablution will remove. In abnormal
states of sexual excitement such odor may be persistent, and,
according to an ancient observation, a nymphomaniac, whose
periods of sexual excitement lasted all through the spring-time,
at these periods always emitted a goatlike odor. It has been said
(G. Tourdes, art. "Aphrodisie," _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des
Sciences Médicales_) that the erotic temperament is characterized
by a special odor.

If the body odors tend to develop at puberty, to be maintained during
sexual life, especially in sympathy with conditions of sexual disturbance,
and to become diminished in old age, being thus a kind of secondary sexual
character, we should expect them to be less marked in those cases in which
the primary sexual characters are less marked. It is possible that this is
actually the case. Hagen, in his _Sexuelle Osphrésiologie_, quotes from
Roubaud's _Traité de l'Impuissance_ the statement that the body odor of
the castrated differs from that of normal individuals. Burdach had
previously stated that the odor of the eunuch is less marked than that of
the normal man.

It is thus possible that defective sexual development tends to be
associated with corresponding olfactory defect. Heschl[37] has reported a
case in which absence of both olfactory nerves coincided with defective
development of the sexual organs. Féré remarks that the impotent show a
repugnance for sexual odors. Dr. Kiernan informs me that in women after
oöphorectomy he has noted a tendency to diminished (and occasionally
increased) sense of smell. These questions, however, await more careful
and extended observation.

A very significant transition from the phenomena of personal odor to those
of sexual attraction by personal odor is to be found in the fact that
among the peoples inhabiting a large part of the world's surface the
ordinary salutation between friends is by mutual smelling of the person.
In some form or another the method of salutation by applying the nose to
the nose, face, or hand of a friend in greeting is found throughout a
large part of the Pacific, among the Papuans, the Eskimo, the hill tribes
of India, in Africa, and elsewhere.[38] Thus, among a certain hill tribe
in India, according to Lewin, they smell a friend's cheek: "in their
language, they do not say, 'Give me a kiss,' but they say 'Smell me.'" And
on the Gambia, according to F. Moore, "When the men salute the women,
they, instead of shaking their hands, put it up to their noses, and smell
twice to the back of it." Here we have very clearly a recognition of the
emotional value of personal odor widely prevailing throughout the world.
The salutation on an olfactory basis may, indeed, be said to be more
general than the salutation on a tactile basis on which European
handshaking rests, each form involving one of the two most intimate and
emotional senses. The kiss may be said to be a development proceeding both
from the olfactory and the tactile bases, with perhaps some other elements
as well, and is too complex to be regarded as a phenomenon of either
purely tactile or purely olfactory origin.[39]

As the sole factor in sexual selection olfaction must be rare. It is said
that Asiatic princes have sometimes caused a number of the ladies to race
in the seraglio garden until they were heated; their garments have then
been brought to the prince, who has selected one of them solely by the
odor.[40] There was here a sexual selection mainly by odor. Any exclusive
efficacy of the olfactory sense is rare, not so much because the
impressions of this sense are inoperative, but because agreeable personal
odors are not sufficiently powerful, and the olfactory organ is too
obtuse, to enable smell to take precedence of sight. Nevertheless, in many
people, it is probable that certain odors, especially those that are
correlated with a healthy and sexually desirable person, tend to be
agreeable; they are fortified by their association with the loved person,
sometimes to an irresistible degree; and their potency is doubtless
increased by the fact, to which reference has already been made, that many
odors, including some bodily odors, are nervous stimulants.

It is possible that the sexual associations of odors have been still
further fortified by a tendency to correlation between a high development
of the olfactory organ and a high development of the sexual apparatus. An
association between a large nose and a large male organ is a very ancient
observation and has been verified occasionally in recent times. There is
normally at puberty a great increase in the septum of the nose, and it is
quite conceivable, in view of the sympathy, which, as we shall see,
certainly exists between the olfactory and sexual region, that the two
regions may develop together under a common influence.

The Romans firmly believed in the connection between a large nose
and a large penis. "Noscitur e naso quanta sit hasta viro,"
stated Ovid. This belief continued to prevail, especially in
Italy, through the middle ages; the physiognomists made much of
it, and licentious women (like Joanna of Naples) were, it
appears, accustomed to bear it in mind, although disappointment
is recorded often to have followed. (See e.g., the quotations and
references given by J.N. Mackenzie, "Physiological and
Pathological Relations between the Nose and the Sexual Apparatus
in Man." _Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin_, No. 82, January,
1898; also Hagen, _Sexuelle Osphrésiologie_, pp. 15-19.) A
similar belief as to the association between the sexual impulse
in women and a long nose was evidently common in England in the
sixteenth century, for in Massinger's _Emperor of the East_ (Act
II, Scene I) we read,

"Her nose, which by its length assures me
Of storms at midnight if I fail to pay her
The tribute she expects."

At the present day, a proverb of the Venetian people still
embodies the belief in the connection between a large nose and a
large sexual member.

The probability that such an association tends in many cases to
prevail is indicated not only by the beliefs of antiquity, when
more careful attention was paid to these matters, but by the
testimony of various modern observers, although it does not
appear that any series of exact observations have yet been made.

It may be noted that Marro, in his careful anthropological study
of criminals (_I Caratteri dei Delinquenti_), found no class of
criminals with so large a proportion alike of anomalies of the
nose and anomalies of the genital organs as sexual offenders.

However this may be, it is less doubtful that there is a very intimate
relation both in men and women between the olfactory mucous membrane of
the nose and the whole genital apparatus, that they frequently show a
sympathetic action, that influences acting on the genital sphere will
affect the nose, and occasionally, it is probable, influences acting on
the nose reflexly affect the genital sphere. To discuss these
relationships would here be out of place, since specialists are not
altogether in agreement concerning the matter. A few are inclined to
regard the association as extremely intimate, so that each region is
sensitive even to slight stimuli applied to the other region, while, on
the other hand, many authorities ignore altogether the question of the
relationship. It would appear, however, that there really is, in a
considerable number of people at all events, a reflex connection of this
kind. It has especially been noted that in many cases congestion of the
nose precedes menstruation.

Bleeding of the nose is specially apt to occur at puberty and during
adolescence, while in women it may take the place of menstruation and is
sometimes more apt to occur at the menstrual periods; disorders of the
nose have also been found to be aggravated at these periods. It has even
been possible to control bleeding of the nose, both in men and women, by
applying ice to the sexual regions. In both men and women, again, cases
have been recorded in which sexual excitement, whether of coitus or
masturbation, has been followed by bleeding of the nose. In numerous cases
it is followed by slight congestive conditions of the nasal passages and
especially by sneezing. Various authors have referred to this phenomenon;
I am acquainted with a lady in whom it is fairly constant.[41] Féré
records the case of a lady, a nervous subject, who began to experience
intense spontaneous sexual excitement shortly after marriage, accompanied
by much secretion from the nose.[42] J.N. Mackenzie is acquainted with a
number of such cases, and he considers that the popular expression
"bride's cold" indicates that this effect of strong sexual excitement is
widely recognized.

The late Professor Hack, of Freiburg, in 1884, called general
medical attention to the intimate connection between the nose and
states of nervous hyperexcitability in various parts of the body,
although such a connection had been recognized for many centuries
in medical literature. While Hack and his disciples thus gave
prominence to this association, they undoubtedly greatly
exaggerated its importance and significance. (Sir Felix Semon,
_British Medical Journal_, November 9, 1901.) Even many workers
who have more recently further added to our knowledge have also,
as sometimes happens with enthusiasts, unduly strained their own
data. Starting from the fact that in women during menstruation
examination of the nose reveals a degree of congestion not found
during the rest of the month, Fliess (_Die Beziehungen zwischen
Nase und Weiblichen Geschlechtsorganen_, 1897), with the help of
a number of elaborate and prolonged observations, has reached
conclusions which, while they seem to be hazardous at some
points, have certainly contributed to build up our knowledge of
this obscure subject. Schiff (_Wiener klinische Wochenschrift_,
1900, p. 58, summarized in _British Medical Journal_, February
16, 1901), starting from a skeptical standpoint, has confirmed
some of Fliess's results, and in a large number of cases
controlled painful menstruation by painting with cocaine the
so-called "genital spots" in the nose, all possibility of
suggestion being avoided. Ries, of Chicago, has been similarly
successful with the method of Fliess (_American Gynæcology_, vol.
iii, No. 4, 1903). Benedikt (_Wiener medicinische Wochenschrift_,
No. 8, 1901, summarized in _Journal of Medical Science_, October,
1901), while pointing out that the nose is not the only organ in
sympathetic relation with the sexual sphere, suggests that the
mechanism of the relationship is involved in the larger problem
of the harmony in growth and in nutrition of the different parts
of the organism. In this way, probably, we may attach
considerable significance to the existence of a kind of erectile
tissue in the nose.

An interesting example of a reflex influence from the nose
affecting the genital sphere has been brought forward by Dr. E.S.
Talbot, of Chicago: "A 56-year-old man was operated on
(September 1, 1903) for the removal of the left cartilage of the
septum of the nose owing to a previous traumatic fracture at the
sixteenth year. No pain was experienced until two years ago, when
a continual soreness occurred at the apical end of the fracture
during the winter months. The operation was decided upon fearing
more serious complications. The parts were cocainized. No pain
was experienced in the operation except at one point at the lower
posterior portion near the floor of the nose. A profound shock to
the general system followed. The reflex influence of the pain
upon the genital organs caused semen to flow continually for
three weeks. Treatment of general motor irritability with camphor
monobromate and conium, on consultation with Dr. Kiernan, checked
the flow. The discharge produced spinal neurasthenia. The legs
and feet felt heavy. Erythromelalgia caused uneasiness. The
patient walked with difficulty. The tired feeling in the feet and
limbs was quite noticeable four months after the operation,
although the pain had, to a great extent diminished." (Chicago
Academy of Medicine, January, 1904, and private letter.)

J.N. Mackenzie has brought together a great many original
observations, together with interesting quotations from old
medical literature, in his two papers: "The Pathological Nasal
Reflex" (_New York Medical Journal_, August 20, 1887) and "The
Physiological and Pathological Relations between the Nose and the
Sexual Apparatus of Man" (_Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin_,
January 1, 1898). A number of cases have also been brought
together from the literature by G. Endriss in his Inaugural
Dissertation, _Die bisherigen Beobachtungen von Physiologischen
und Pathologischen Beziehungen der oberen Luftwege zu den
Sexualorganen_, Teil. II, Würzburg, 1892.

The intimate association between the sexual centers and the olfactory
tract is well illustrated by the fact that this primitive and ancient
association tends to come to the surface in insanity. It is recognized by
many alienists that insanity of a sexual character is specially liable to
be associated with hallucinations of smell.

Many eminent alienists in various countries are very decidedly of
the opinion that there is a special tendency to the association
of olfactory hallucinations with sexual manifestations, and,
although one or two authorities have expressed doubt on the
matter, the available evidence clearly indicates such an
association. Hallucinations of smell are comparatively rare as
compared to hallucinations of sight and hearing; they are
commoner in women than in men and they not infrequently occur at
periods of sexual disturbance, at adolescence, in puerperal
fever, at the change of life, in women with ovarian troubles, and
in old people troubled with sexual desires or remorse for such
desires. They have often been noted as specially frequent in
cases of excessive masturbation.

Krafft-Ebing, who found olfactory hallucinations common in
various sexual states, considers that they are directly dependent
on sexual excitement (_Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_,
bd. 34, ht. 4, 1877). Conolly Norman believes in a distinct and
frequent association between olfactory hallucinations and sexual
disturbance (_Journal of Mental Science_, July, 1899, p. 532).
Savage is also impressed by the close association between sexual
disturbance or changes in the reproductive organs and
hallucinations of smell as well as of touch. He has found that
persistent hallucinations of smell disappeared when a diseased
ovary was removed, although the patient remained insane. He
considers that such hallucinations of smell are allied to
reversions. (G.H. Savage, "Smell, Hallucinations of," Tuke's
_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_; cf. the same author's
manual of _Insanity and Allied Neuroses_.) Matusch, while not
finding olfactory hallucinations common at the climacteric,
states that when they are present they are connected with uterine
trouble and sexual craving. He finds them more common in young
women. (Matusch, "Der Einfluss des Climacterium auf Entstchung
und Form der Geistesstörung," _Allgemeine Zeitschrift für
Psychiatrie_, vol. xlvi, ht. 4). Féré has related a significant
case of a young man in whom hallucinations of smell accompanied
the sexual orgasm; he subsequently developed epilepsy, to which
the hallucination then constituted the aura (_Comptes Rendus de
la Société de Biologie_, December, 1896). The prevalence of a
sexual element in olfactory hallucinations has been investigated
by Bullen, who examined into 95 cases of hallucinations of smell
among the patients in several asylums. (In a few cases there were
reasons for believing that peripheral conditions existed which
would render these hallucinations more strictly illusions.) Of
these, 64 were women. Sixteen of the women were climacteric
cases, and 3 of them had sexual hallucinations or delusions.
Fourteen other women (chiefly cases of chronic delusional
insanity) had sexual delusions. Altogether, 31 men and women had
sexual delusions. This is a large proportion. Bullen is not,
however, inclined to admit any direct connection between the
reproductive system and the sense of smell. He finds that other
hallucinations are very frequently associated with the olfactory
hallucinations, and considers that the co-existence of olfactory
and sexual troubles simply indicates a very deep and widespread
nervous disturbance. (F. St. John Bullen, "Olfactory
Hallucinations in the Insane," _Journal of Mental Science_, July,
1899.) In order to elucidate the matter fully we require further
precise inquiries on the lines Bullen has laid down.

It may be of interest to note, in this connection, that smell and
taste hallucinations appear to be specially frequent in forms of
religious insanity. Thus, Dr. Zurcher, in her inaugural
dissertation on Joan of Arc (_Jeanne d'Arc_, Leipzig, 1895, p.
72), estimates that on the average in such insanity nearly 50 per
cent, of the hallucinations affect smell and taste; she refers
also to the olfactory hallucinations of great religious leaders,
Francis of Assisi, Katherina Emmerich, Lazzaretti, and the
Anabaptists.

It may well be, as Zwaardemaker has suggested in his _Physiologie des
Geruchs_, that the nasal congestion at menstruation and similar phenomena
are connected with that association of smell and sexuality which is
observable throughout the whole animal world, and that the congestion
brings about a temporary increase of olfactory sensitiveness during the
stage of sexual excitation.[43] Careful investigation of olfactory
acuteness would reveal the existence of such menstrual heightening of its
acuity.

In a few exceptional, but still quite healthy people, smell would appear
to possess an emotional predominance which it cannot be said to possess in
the average person. These exceptional people are of what Binet in his
study of sexual fetichism calls olfactive type; such persons form a group
which, though of smaller size and less importance, is fairly comparable to
the well-known groups of visual type, of auditory type, and of psychomotor
type. Such people would be more attentive to odors, more moved by
olfactory sympathies and antipathies, than are ordinary people. For these,
it may well be, the supremacy accorded to olfactory influences in Jäger's
_Entdeckung der Seele_, though extravagantly incorrect for ordinary
persons, may appear quite reasonable.

It is certain also that a great many neurasthenic people, and
particularly those who are sexually neurasthenic, are peculiarly
susceptible to olfactory influences. A number of eminent poets and
novelists--especially, it would appear, in France--seem to be in this
case. Baudelaire, of all great poets, has most persistently and most
elaborately emphasized the imaginative and emotional significance of odor;
the _Fleurs du Mal_ and many of the _Petits Poèmes en Prose_ are, from
this point of view, of great interest. There can be no doubt that in
Baudelaire's own imaginative and emotional life the sense of smell played
a highly important part; and that, in his own words, odor was to him what
music is to others. Throughout Zola's novels--and perhaps more especially
in _La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret_--there is an extreme insistence on odors of
every kind. Prof. Leopold Bernard wrote an elaborate study of this aspect
of Zola's work[44]; he believed that underlying Zola's interest in odors
there was an abnormally keen olfactory sensibility and large development
of the olfactory region of the brain. Such a supposition is, however,
unnecessary, and, as a matter of fact, a careful examination of Zola's
olfactory sensibility, conducted by M. Passy, showed that it was somewhat
below normal.[45] At the same time it was shown that Zola was really a
person of olfactory psychic type, with a special attention to odors and a
special memory for them; as is frequently the case with perfumers with
less than normal olfactory acuity he possessed a more than normal power of
discriminating odors; it is possible that in early life his olfactory
acuity may also have been above normal. In the same way Nietzsche, in his
writings, shows a marked sensibility, and especially antipathy, as regards
odors, which has by some been regarded as an index to a real physical
sensibility of abnormal keenness; according to Möbius, however, there was
no reason for supposing this to be the case.[46] Huysmans, who throughout
his books reveals a very intense preoccupation with the exact shades of
many kinds of sensory impressions, and an apparently abnormally keen
sensibility to them, has shown a great interest in odors, more especially
in an oft-quoted passage in _A Rebours_. The blind Milton of "Paradise
Lost" (as the late Mr. Grant Allen once remarked to me), dwells much on
scents; in this case it is doubtless to the blindness and not to any
special organic predisposition that we must attribute this direction of
sensory attention.[47] Among our older English poets, also, Herrick
displays a special interest in odors with a definite realization of their
sexual attractiveness.[48] Shelley, who was alive to so many of the
unusual æsthetic aspects of things, often shows an enthusiastic delight in
odors, more especially those of flowers. It may, indeed, be said that most
poets--though to a less degree than those I have mentioned--devote a
special attention to odors, and, since it has been possible to describe
smell as the sense of imagination, this need not surprise us. That
Shakespeare, for instance, ranked this sense very high indeed is shown by
various passages in his works and notably by Sonnet LIV: "O, how much more
doth beauty beauteous seem?"--in which he implicitly places the attraction
of odor on at least as high a level as that of vision.[49]

A neurasthenic sensitiveness to odors, specially sexual odors, is
frequently accompanied by lack of sexual vigor. In this way we may account
for the numerous cases in which old men in whom sexual desire survives the
loss of virile powers--probably somewhat abnormal persons at the
outset--find satisfaction in sexual odors. Here, also, we have the basis
for olfactory fetichism. In such fetichism the odor of the woman alone,
whoever she may be and however unattractive she may be, suffices to
furnish complete sexual satisfaction. In many, although not all, of those
cases in which articles of women's clothing become the object of
fetichistic attraction, there is certainly an olfactory element due to the
personal odor attaching to the garments.[50]

Olfactory influences play a certain part in various sexually
abnormal tendencies and practices which do not proceed from an
exclusively olfactory fascination. Thus, _cunnilingus_ and
_fellatio_ derive part of their attraction, more especially in
some individuals, from a predilection for the odors of the sexual
parts. (See, e.g., Moll, _Untersuchungen über die Libido
Sexualis_, bd. 1, p. 134.) In many cases smell plays no part in
the attraction; "I enjoy _cunnilingus_, if I like the girl very
much," a correspondent writes, "_in spite_ of the smell." We may
associate this impulse with the prevalence of these practices
among sexual inverts, in whom olfactory attractions are often
specially marked. Those individuals, also, who are sexually
affected by the urinary and alvine excretions ("_renifleurs_,"
"_stereoraires_," etc.) are largely, though not necessarily
altogether, moved by olfactory impressions. The attraction was,
however, exclusively olfactory in the case of the young woman
recorded by Moraglia (_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1892, p. 267),
who was irresistibly excited by the odor of the fermented urine
of men, and possibly also in the case narrated to Moraglia by
Prof. L. Bianchi (ib. p. 568), in which a wife required flatus
from her husband.

The sexual pleasure derived from partial strangulation (discussed
in the study of "Love and Pain" in a previous volume) may be
associated with heightened olfactory sexual excitation. Dr.
Kiernan, who points this out to me, has investigated a few
neuropathic patients who like to have their necks squeezed, as
they express it, and finds that in the majority the olfactory
sensibility is thus intensified.

Even in ordinary normal persons, however, there can be no doubt that
personal odor tends to play a not inconsiderable part in sexual
attractions and sexual repulsions. As a sexual excitant, indeed, it comes
far behind the stimuli received through the sense of sight. The
comparative bluntness of the sense of smell in man makes it difficult for
olfactory influence to be felt, as a rule, until the preliminaries of
courtship are already over; so that it is impossible for smell ever to
possess the same significance in sexual attraction in man that it
possesses in the lower animals. With that reservation there can be no
doubt that odor has a certain favorable or unfavorable influence in sexual
relationships in all human races from the lowest to the highest. The
Polynesian spoke with contempt of those women of European race who "have
no smell," and in view of the pronounced personal odor of so many savage
peoples as well as of the careful attention which they so often pay to
odors, we may certainly assume, even in the absence of much definite
evidence, that smell counts for much in their sexual relationships. This
is confirmed by such practices as that found among some primitive
peoples--as, it is stated, in the Philippines--of lovers exchanging their
garments to have the smell of the loved one about them. In the barbaric
stages of society this element becomes self-conscious and is clearly
avowed; personal odors are constantly described with complacency,
sometimes as mingled with the lavish use of artificial perfumes, in much
of the erotic literature produced in the highest stages of barbarism,
especially by Eastern peoples living in hot climates; it is only necessary
to refer to the _Song of Songs_, the _Arabian Nights_, and the Indian
treatises on love. Even in some parts of Europe the same influence is
recognized in the crudest animal form, and Krauss states that among the
Southern Slavs it is sometimes customary to leave the sexual parts
unwashed because a strong odor of these parts is regarded as a sexual
stimulant. Under the usual conditions of life in Europe personal odor has
sunk into the background; this has been so equally under the conditions of
classic, mediæval, and modern life. Personal odor has been generally
regarded as unæsthetic; it has, for the most part, only been mentioned to
be reprobated, and even those poets and others who during recent centuries
have shown a sensitive delight and interest in odors--Herrick, Shelley,
Baudelaire, Zola, and Huysmans--have seldom ventured to insist that a
purely natural and personal odor can be agreeable. The fact that it may be
so, and that for most people such odors cannot be a matter of indifference
in the most intimate of all relationships, is usually only to be learned
casually and incidentally. There can be no doubt, however, that, as
Kiernan points out, the extent to which olfaction influences the sexual
sphere in civilized man has been much underestimated. We need not,
therefore, be surprised at the greater interest which has recently been
taken in this subject. As usually happens, indeed, there has been in some
writers a tendency to run to the opposite extreme, and we cannot, with
Gustav Jäger, regard the sexual instinct as mainly or altogether an
olfactory matter.

Of the Padmini, the perfect woman, the "lotus woman," Hindu
writers say that "her sweat has the odor of musk," while the
vulgar woman, they say, smells of fish (_Kama Sutra of
Vatsyayana_). Ploss and Bartels (_Das Weib_, 1901, p. 218) bring
forward a passage from the Tamil _Kokkôgam_, minutely describing
various kinds of sexual odor in women, which they regard as
resting on sound observation.

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

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

"My beloved is unto me," she sings, "as a bag of myrrh
That lieth between my breasts;
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna flowers
In the vineyard of En-gedi."

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

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

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

In 1821 Cadet-Devaux published, in the _Revue Encyclopédique_, a
study entitled "De l'atmosphère de la Femme et de sa Puissance,"
which attracted a great deal of attention in Germany as well as
in France; he considered that the exhalations of the feminine
body are of the first importance in sexual attraction.

Prof. A. Galopin in 1886 wrote a semiscientific book, _Le Parfum
de la Femme_, in which the sexual significance of personal odor
is developed to its fullest. He writes with enthusiasm concerning
the sweet and health-giving character of the natural perfume of a
beloved woman, and the mischief done both to health and love by
the use of artificial perfumes. "The purest marriage that can be
contracted between a man and a woman," he asserts (p. 157) "is
that engendered by olfaction and sanctioned by a common
assimilation in the brain of the animated molecules du

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