In lethargy and catalepsy the perspiration very often has a cadaverous odor, which has probably occasionally led to a mistaken diagnosis of death. Schaper and de Meara speak of persons having a cadaveric odor during their entire life.
Various ingesta readily give evidence of themselves by their influence upon the breath. It has been remarked that the breath of individuals who have recently performed a prolonged necropsy smells for some hours of the odor of the cadaver. Such things as copaiba, cubebs, sandalwood, alcohol, coffee, etc., have their recognizable fragrance. There is an instance of a young woman taking Fowler's solution who had periodic offensive axillary sweats that ceased when the medicine was discontinued.
Henry of Navarre was a victim of bromidrosis; proximity to him was insufferable to his courtiers and mistresses, who said that his odor was like that of carrion. Tallemant says that when his wife, Marie de Medicis, approached the bridal night with him she perfumed her apartments and her person with the essences of the flowers of her country in order that she might be spared the disgusting odor of her spouse. Some persons are afflicted with an excessive perspiration of the feet which often takes a disgusting odor. The inguinoscrotal and inguinovulvar perspirations have an aromatic odor like that of the genitals of either ***.
During menstruation, hyperidrosis of the axillae diffuses an aromatic odor similar to that of acids or chloroform, and in suppression of menses, according to the Ephemerides, the odor is as of hops.
Odors of Disease.--The various diseases have their own peculiar odors. The "hospital odor," so well known, is essentially variable in character and chiefly due to an aggregation of cutaneous exhalations. The wards containing women and children are perfumed with butyric acid, while those containing men are influenced by the presence of alkalies like ammonia.
Gout, icterus, and even cholera (Drasch and Porker) have their own odors. Older observers, confirmed by Doppner, say that all the plague-patients at Vetlianka diffused an odor of honey. In diabetes there is a marked odor of apples. The sweat in dysentery unmistakably bears the odor of the dejecta. Behier calls the odor of typhoid that of the blood, and Berard says that it attracts flies even before death. Typhus has a mouse-like odor, and the following diseases have at different times been described as having peculiar odors,--measles, the smell of freshly plucked feathers; scarlatina, of bread hot from the oven; eczema and impetigo, the smell of mold; and rupia, a decidedly offensive odor.
The hair has peculiar odors, differing in individuals. The hair of the Chinese is known to have the odor of musk, which cannot be washed away by the strongest of chemicals. Often the distinctive odor of a female is really due to the odor of great masses of hair. It is said that wig-makers simply by the sense of smell can tell whether hair has been cut from the living head or from combings, as hair loses its odor when it falls out. In the paroxysms of hysteroepilepsy the hair sometimes has a specific odor of ozone. Taenia favosa gives to the scalp an odor resembling that of cat's urine.
Sexual Influence of Odors.--In this connection it may be mentioned that there is a peculiar form of sexual perversion, called by Binet "fetichi**," in which the subject displays a perverted taste for the odors of handkerchiefs, shoes, underclothing, and other articles of raiment worn by the opposite ***. Binet maintains that these articles play the part of the "fetich" in early theology. It is said that the favors given by the ladies to the knights in the Middle Ages were not only tokens of remembrance and appreciation, but sexual excitants as well. In his remarkable "Osphresiologie," Cloquet calls attention to the sexual pleasure excited by the odors of flowers, and tells how Richelieu excited his sexual functions by living in an atmosphere loaded with these perfumes. In the Orient the harems are perfumed with intense extracts and flowers, in accordance with the strong belief in the aphrodisiac effect of odors.
Krafft-Ebing quotes several interesting cases in which the connection between the olfactory and sexual functions is strikingly verified.
"The case of Henry III shows that contact with a person's perspiration may be the exciting cause of passionate love. At the betrothal feast of the King of Navarre and Margaret of Valois he accidentally dried his face with a garment of Maria of Cleves which was moist with her perspiration. Although she was the bride of the Prince of Conde, Henry immediately conceived such a passion for her that he could not resist it, and, as history shows, made her very unhappy. An analogous instance is related of Henry IV, whose passion for the beautiful Gabrielle is said to have originated at the instant when, at a ball, he wiped his brow with her handkerchief."Krafft-Ebing also says that "one learns from reading the work of Ploss ('Das Weib') that attempts to attract a person of the opposite *** by means of the perspiration may be discerned in many forms in popular psychology. In reference to this a custom is remarkable which holds among the natives of the Philippine Islands when they become engaged. When it becomes necessary for the engaged pair to separate they exchange articles of wearing apparel, by means of which each becomes assured of faithfulness.
These objects are carefully preserved, covered with kisses, and smelled."The love of perfumes by libertines and prostitutes, as well as sensual women of the higher classes, is quite marked. Heschl reported a case of a man of forty-five in whom absence of the olfactory sense was associated with imperfect development of the genitals; it is also well known that olfactory hallucinations are frequently associated with psychoses of an erotic type.
