284? PERSPIRATION. 



persons sweat most indifferent parts. Now a person, from merely 

 happening to sweat most in a part, the secretion of which is ge- 

 nerally offensive, may probably acquire the characteristic odour, 

 without having a particular disposition to filthiness of secretion. 

 The general perspiration of every one probably smells peculiarly, 

 for savages can distinguish the nation of persons by the smell. e 

 (Haller and Humboldt.) The boy born deaf and blind, whose 

 history is related by Mr. Dugald Stewart, distinguished people 

 by their odour ; and I once saw, in the report of a trial in 

 the newspapers, that dealers in hair boasted of being able to 

 tell the nation from which the hair came, merely by the 

 smell. The power possessed by brutes in distinguishing and 

 tracing us and other animals is well known ; and we perceive the 

 various odours of many brutes, especially if they perspire freely 

 and are numerous. The odour of a dog-kennel on the one hand, 

 and of a heated flock of sheep in the road, must be known to 

 every one. No doubt every animal and vegetable, like all 

 inanimate matter, exhales a peculiar odour, cognisable to organs 

 which are of sufficient acuteness and not blunted by habitual 

 exposure to it. 



In different diseases the odour of the perspiration is often pe- 

 culiar ; and the admission of certain substances into the system, 

 that escape by the pulmonary and cutaneous secretions, will ne- 

 cessarily give them an odour. f Some odours of animals are 

 most intense during sexual heat. 



The odour of some persons is said to have been quite a per- 

 fume. Plutarch mentions that Alexander the Great smelt, not 

 of carnage like a hero, but most pleasantly. Fragrance proceeded 

 also from Augustus.? In the memoirs of the Queen of Navarre 

 we read that Catherine de' Medici was a nosegay; and Cujacius 



e " Fr. L. Andr. Koeler, De Odore per cutem spirants in&tatu sano ac morboso. 

 Gotting. 1794- 4to." 



' ' Sieve's dans Paris, 

 Sentent encore le chou dont ils furent nourris. 



MOLIERE. 



8 Since both these were worshipped as gods we cannot wonder at the thing ; for 

 the most elegant of the gods and goddesses had all this attribute. Diana was 

 recognised by Hippolytus from her divine odour, 



EURIPIDES, Hippolytus^ 1391. 



