Aromatics and the Soul: A Study of SmellsMcKenzie, Dan
Science
Aromatics and the Soul: A Study of Smells
McKenzie, Dan
Smell
In the meantime chemists are applying themselves to the creation of new
varieties of perfume, and, if we may judge from those disseminated by
certain ladies in public places, with a success that startles and even
irritates us. Compared with them, the love-philtres of olden days must
have been but feeble things.
“How d’you know you’re in the right ’bus?” asked the ’bus conductor of
the blind man who was confidently boarding his vehicle.
“This is the Maida Vale ’bus,” was the contemptuous reply. “I knows it
by the smell o’ musk.”
The inexhaustible capacity of the olfactory organ, to which we alluded
above, is by no means its only marvel. It is also of the most wonderful
delicacy, equalling, even if it does not surpass, in this respect, the
sensitiveness of the eye to light.
This property of the smell-organ has been scientifically estimated.
There are many ways of doing so, that by means of Zwaardemaker’s
olfactometer being perhaps the most popular:
“This consists of two tubes that slide one within the other, and so
shaped that one end of the inner tube may be applied to the nostril.
The odorous material is carried on the inner surface of the outer
tube. When the inner tube, which is graduated, is slipped into the
outer one so as to cover completely its inner face, and air is drawn
into the nostril through the tube, the odorous surface, being
covered, gives out no particles, and no odour is perceived. By
adjusting the inner tube in relation to the outer one, whereby more
or less of the odorous surface is exposed, a point can be found
where minimum stimulation occurs. The amount of odorous substance
delivered under these circumstances to the air current has been
designated by Zwaardemaker as an olfactie, the unit of olfactory
stimulation. Having determined for a given substance the area
necessary for the delivery of one olfactie, doubling that surface by
an appropriate movement of the inner tube will produce a stimulus of
two olfacties, and so forth. Thus a graded series of measured
olfactory stimuli can easily be obtained. Further, by using outer
tubes carrying different odorous substances various comparisons can
be instituted as measured in olfacties” (Parker).
Instruments more elaborate and of greater accuracy have, as a matter of
fact, been devised and used, but they need not detain us.
The results obtained by these and other methods of determining the
minimum stimulus of olfaction are certainly astonishing, and reveal as
nothing else can the delicate acuteness of the sense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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