88 HAUPT— TOBIT'S BLINDNESS AND SARA'S HYSTERIA. 



serving to close the aperture of the shell when the animal is re- 

 tracted. The operculum of some species of strombus emits a 

 musky odor. In old works on materia medica it is said to have been 

 known by the name of unguis odoratus, blatta Bysantina, and devil's 

 claw. Arab women in Nubia and Upper Egypt scent themselves by 

 making a fire of charcoal in a small but deep hole in the floor of the 

 hut or tent. They throw on the charcoal ginger, cloves, myrrh, 

 frankincense, cinnamon, sandal wood, onycha, and a kind of sea- 

 weed, and crouch over the hole enveloped in their mantles which fall 

 from their necks like tents (EB 3512; cf. EB^^ 27, 984'', below). 



The old pharmaceutical name of asafetida is devil's dung; so you 

 can imagine the sweet smell of this remedy. The specific remedy 

 for epilepsy is bromide of potassium, and bromine is derived from 

 ^pcotxo^ ^ stench. In Germany an offensive animal oil, mixed with 

 petroleum and dyed with alcanna, was extensively advertised as a 

 patent medicine for epilepsy (BK 7, 567% 1. 18). Pliny (32, 226) 

 says that an epileptic seizure may be checked by the fumes of burn- 

 ing horns of goats or deer (morbuni ipsuui dcprehendit caprini 

 cornus vcl cervina usfi nidor). The verb dcprehcndcre in this con- 

 nection does not mean to detect, but to arrest, check. Horn, espe- 

 cially hartshorn, was formerly much used as a source of ammonia, 

 and ammonia has a pungent and sufTocating smell. Pliny calls epi- 

 lepsy morbus comitialis: when a member of the forum was seized 

 with an epileptic fit, the assembly was broken up. 



Hysterical patients often enjoy the most disagreeable odors. 

 They may object to a sweet-smelling flower, but like, e.g., the odor 

 of burned feathers. The oil of valerian smells like stale cheese. It 

 is found not only in the root of valerian, but also in the secretion of 

 sweating feet and in the liver of the dolphin. Delphinic, which is 

 identical with isovaleric acid, also known as isopropylacetic acid, was 

 discovered a hundred years ago by the great French chemist Michel 

 Eugene Chevreul in his classical researches on animal fats. He was 

 nearly 103 years old when he died in 1889. The fish caught by 

 Tobias may have been a dolphin. Several species of dolphins are 

 found in large rivers, e.g., in the Amazon and the Ganges. Some 

 are entirely fluviatile and never pass out to sea. Pliny (8, 91) says 



