AseptJembe^ia8r6"-}    Odor  in  the  Recognition  of  Drugs.  417 
stranger,  in  a  dark  night,  by  the  sense  of  smell,  and  can  tell  whether 
he  is  a  white  man,  an  Indian  or  a  negro."  The  Arabs  are  said  to 
smell  a  fire  thirty  miles  off.  There  is  an  interesting  case  on  record 
of  a  lad  by  the  name  of  James  Mitchell,  who  was  born  blind,  dumb 
and  deaf,  who  chiefly  depended  on  smell  for  keeping  up  a  connection 
with  the  outer  world. 
Amongst  refined  society,  however,  the  word  smell  is  almost 
tabooed.  Dr.  A.  L.  Benedict  quotes  Professor  Woods  Hutchinson 
as  saying  the  present  method  of  training  children  is  such  as  to 
repress  the  intellectual  use  of  the  sense  of  smell.  To  smell  food 
subjects  the  child  to  dismissal  from  the  table ;  to  ask,  "  What 
smells?  "  is  considered  vulgar;  to  say  "Who  smells?"  is  treated  as 
an  indecency.  In  fact,  in  our  endeavor  to  be  "  nice,"  we  even  con- 
fuse the  word  "smell"  with  the  always  intransitive  verbs  'reek" 
and  "  stink,"  as  is  well  illustrated  by  an  anecdote  of  the  lexi- 
cographer, Johnson.  A  lady,  in  remonstrating  with  him  for  his  well- 
known  carelessness  in  matters  of  toilet,  said  :  "  Positively,  doctor, 
you  smell."  "You  are  wrong,  madam,"  replied  the  doctor,  "you 
smell,  but  I  stink."  Instead  of  .  blunting  this  sense,  it  should  be 
cultivated  and  rendered  more  acute,  as  by  means  of  it  we  are  able 
to  recognize  the  presence  of  deleterious  gases  and  organic  impuri- 
ties in  the  air  more  quickly  than  by  any  scientific  method.  We  are 
aided  to  a  considerable  extent  in  the  selection  of  our  food  by  the 
sense  of  smell ;  no  one  would  think  of  eating  any  food  having  a  rank 
or  putrid  odor ;  on  the  other  hand,  food  having  a  pleasant  odor,  by 
reflex  action,  excites  the  flow  of  saliva  (we  say,  makes  the  mouth 
water),  and  thus  aids  digestion.  Odor  maybe  considered  one  of 
the  ways  by  which  nature  frequently  gives  warning  of  the  poisonous 
character  of  plants,  as  in  the  case  of  cannabis  indica,  opium,  tobacco, 
etc.  The  sense  of  smell  is  also  an  aid  in  differentiating  many  plants 
and  drugs  from  one  another,  and  what  is  almost  of  equal  value,  it 
enables  us  to  judge  to  a  considerable  extent  of  their  freshness.  For 
example,  the  herb  tansy,  as  frequently  seen  in  the  market,  is  much 
broken,  so  that  its  identity  can  only  be  determined  by  careful  exami- 
nation; but  by  rubbing  between  the  hands  a  little  of  the  drug,  it 
can  be  recognized  instantly,  as  its  odor  is  more  characteristic  than 
either  its  flowers  or  incised  leaves.  Elecampane  is  also  a  drug  with 
so  characteristic  an  odor  that  the  smallest  piece  of  it  can  always  be 
distinguished  in  this  way.    An  odor  makes  the  most  acute  impres- 
