At all periods perfumes seem to have been more or less adopted as a luxury among the wealthy and fashionable. Tradition states that they were frequently rendered instrumental to sinister purposes, as the vehicle of poisonous substances. Historians relate that the Emperor Henri VI. and a prince of Savoy, were destroyed with perfumed gloves. Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, and mother of Henri IV., died from the poisonous effect of gloves purchased from the noted RenÉ, perfumer and confidential agent of Catherine de Medicis. Lancelot, King of Naples, was destroyed by a scented handkerchief prepared by a Florentine lady. Pope Clement VII. sunk under the baneful effluvia of a torch that was carried before him; and Mathioli relates, that nosegays thus impregnated have been frequently known to prove fatal. It is certain that, without the aid of venenous substances, various flowers have caused serious accidents. Barton tells us that the magnolia glauca occasioned a paroxysm of fever, and increased the severity of an attack of gout. Jacquin had seen the lobelia longiflora producing a sense of suffocation; and the nerium oleander in a close chamber, has caused death. The injurious effects of bulbous flowers in giving rise to violent headachs, giddiness, and even fainting, are generally known. The horror roses inspire to the Roman ladies is scarcely credible; and Cromer affirms that it was to the odour of that ornament of our gardens that the death of one of the daughters of Nicolas I., Count of Salm, and of a Polish bishop, was attributed. The sympathetic effect that this flower can create is illustrated by Capellini, who saw a lady fall into a syncope on perceiving a rose in a girl’s bosom, although it turned out to be an artificial one. The partiality or antipathy to certain odours is equally unaccountable, for the Italian ladies, who dread the rose, delight in the disgusting aroma of rue, which they carry about as a salubrious plant, that, according to their notions, dispels the cattiva aria, although it is not impossible that they might fancy it possessed of those salutary qualities to which Ovid had alluded:

Utilius summas acuentes lumina rutas,
Et quidquid veneri corpora nostra negat.

Rue, according to Serenus Samonicus, was one of the ingredients of the fabled antidote of Mithridates, which he thus describes:

Antidotus verÒ multis Mithridatica fertur
Consociata modis, sed magnus Scrinia regis
CÙm raperit victor, vilem deprendit in illis
Synthesim, et vulgata satis medicamina risit.
Bis denum RutÆ folium, salis et breve granum,
Juglandesque duas, totidem cum corpore ficus;
HÆc oriente die, parco conspersa LycÆo,
Sumebat, metuens dederat quÆ pocula mater.

The ancients were so fond of perfumes, that they scented their persons and garments, their vases, their domestic vessels, and their military insignia. They not only considered aromatic emanations as acceptable to the gods, and therefore used them in their temples, as they are at present by the Roman Catholics, but as announcing the presence of their divinities; and Virgil thus speaks of Venus:

————Avertens rose cervice refulsit,
AmbrosiÆque comÆ divinum vertice odorem
SpiravÊre.

Chaplets of roses were invariably worn in festivals and ceremonies; and wines were also aromatised with various odoriferous substances. The Franks and the Gauls continued the same custom; and Gregory of Tours called these artificial-flavoured liquors, Vina odoramentis immixta. To this day, the manipulation of French wines gives them a fictitious bouquet, with raspberries, orris-root, and divers drugs to suit the British market.

No external sense is so intimately connected with the internal senses as that of smell; none so powerful in exciting and removing syncope, or more capable of receiving delicate and delicious impressions: hence Rousseau has denominated this faculty “the sense of imagination.” No sensations can be remembered in so lively a manner as those which are recalled by peculiar odours, which are frequently known to act in a most energetic measure upon our physical and moral propensities. How many perfumes excite a lively feeling of fond regret when reminding us of the beloved one who was wont to select them, and whom we long to meet again! It is not improbable that our partiality to the hair of those who are dear to us, arises from this circumstance. Every individual emits a peculiar odour; and, according to Plutarch, Alexander was distinguished by the sweet aroma that he shed. Perhaps the expression, so frequently found in the lives of the saints, “who die in odour of sanctity,” may be referred to a belief that this peculiar gift was granted to beatitude.

It has been observed, that animals who possess the most acute smell, have the nasal organs the most extensively developed. The Ethiopians and the American Indians are remarkable for the acuteness of this sense, accounting for the wonderful power of tracking their enemies. But although we may take the peculiar organization of their olfactory organs as being partly the cause of this keen perceptibility, we must in a great measure attribute this perfection to their mode of living. Hunting and war are their chief pursuits, to which they are trained from their earliest infancy: therefore this perfection may, to a certain extent, be the result of habit; and the sight and hearing of these wanderers are as singularly perfect as their smelling. Mr. Savage relates, that a New Zealander heard the report of a distant gun at sea, or perceived a strange sail, when no other man on board could discern it. Pallas, in speaking of the Calmucks, says that many of them can distinguish by smelling at the hole of a fox whether the animal be there or not; and on their journeys and military expeditions they often smell out a fire or a camp, and thus seek quarters for the night or booty. OlaÜs Borrich informs us, that the guides between Smyrna, Aleppo, and Babylon, when traversing the desert, ascertain distances by the smell of the sand. That odours float in the atmospheric air is obvious; the distance at which they are perceived is incredible. The spicy breezes of Ceylon are distinguished long before the island is seen; and it is a well-known fact that vessels have been saved by the olfactory acuteness of dogs, who, to use the common expression, were observed to “sniff” the land that had not been descried. As a proof of the intimate connexion between smell and respiration, when the breath is held odorous substances are not perceived, and it is only after expiration that they are again recognised. A proof of this may be easily obtained by placing the open neck of a small phial containing an essential oil in the mouth during the acts of inspiration and subsequent expiration. Willis was the first who observed that, on placing a sapid substance in the mouth, and at the same time closing the nostrils, the sensation of taste is suspended; and this observation has given rise to the prevailing opinion that smelling and tasting are intimately related. Odour which thus accompanies taste is termed flavour; and the ingenious Dr. Prout has admirably defined the distinction between taste and flavour, and he considers the latter an intermediate sensation between taste and smell.

The acuteness of the sensation of smelling in animals is such, that in many instances our observations have been deemed fabulous. The distance at which a dog tracks his master is scarcely credible; and it is strange that the ancients attributed a similar perfection to the goose. Ælian affirms that the philosopher Lycadeus had one of these birds that found him out like a dog:

Humanum longÈ prÆsentit odorem
Romulidarum acris servator, candidus anser.

Birds of prey will scent the battle-field at prodigious distances, and they are often seen hovering instinctively over the ground where the conflict is to supply their festival. Humboldt relates, that in Peru, at Quito, and in the province of Popayan, when sportsmen wish to obtain that species of vulture called vultur gryphus, they kill a cow or a horse, and in a short time these sagacious birds crowd to glut their ravenous appetites. Ancient historians assert that vultures have cleft the air one hundred and sixty-six leagues to arrive in time to feast upon a battle; and Pliny boldly affirms that even crows have so acute a sense of approaching corruption, that they can scent death three days before dissolution, and generally pay the moribond a visit a day before his time, not to be disappointed. This notion has become a vulgar prejudice, as much so, indeed, as the howling of a dog, which is considered in most countries as foreboding death. In various animals an offensive odour is a protective gift. The staphylinus olens, for instance, sheds an effluvium which effectually keeps away the birds who would otherwise pounce upon him. But of all singular perfections in the sense of smelling that were ever recorded, may be cited the monk of Prague and the blind man in the Quinze-vingt Hospital of Paris, who possessed the faculty of ascertaining the presence of virginity whenever a female had the luck of being introduced to them.

Many curious instances are recorded, where the loss of one sense has added to the acuteness of others. Dr. Moyse the well-known blind philosopher, could distinguish a black dress on his friends by the smell. Professor Upham of the United States, mentions a blind girl who could select her own articles out of a basket of linen brought in by the laundress.

These anomalous senses, for such they may be called, are as wonderful as they are inexplicable, and appear to arise from a peculiar sensibility of the organs of smell, which renders them capable of being stimulated in a peculiar manner, that no language can express or define. It is scent, no doubt, that gives the migratory power to various animals; “which enables them,” to use the words of Dr. Mason Good, “to steer from climate to climate, and from coast to coast; and which, if possessed by man, might perhaps render superfluous the use of the magnet, and considerably infringe upon the science of logarithms? Whence comes it that the fieldfare and red-wing, that pass the summer in Norway, or the wild-duck and merganser, that in like manner summer in the woods and lakes of Lapland, are able to track the pathless void of the atmosphere with the utmost nicety, and arrive on our own coasts uniformly in the beginning of October.”[11]

This sense is not limited to migratory animals, as instanced by carrier-pigeons, who have been known not only to carry bags in a straight line from city to city, but traverse the city with an undeviating flight. Surely this faculty must be attributed to the sense of smell; it can scarcely be referred to sight or hearing; although the wonders of the creation are such, that we can no more account for these peculiar attributes refused to the lords of the creation, than for the power of the lobster, who not only can reproduce his claws when deprived of them by accident, but cast them off to extricate himself, from the captor’s grasp. The Tipula pectiniformis, or the daddy long-legs of our infant amusement and amazement, possesses the same renovating faculties. The gluttonous gad-fly may be cut to pieces without any apparent interruption in his meal, when fastened to one’s hand: the polype does not seem to be at all discomposed when we turn him inside out; and, when divided into various sections, each portion is endowed with an instinctive and reformative power of multiplying his species in countless numbers! The diversity of our olfactory fancies is unaccountable and only illustrates the words of Petronius,

Non omnibus unum est quod placet; hic spinas, colligit ille rosas.