During sexual excitement, as women can testify, a man very frequently, if not normally, gives out an odor which, as usually described, proceeds from the skin, the breath, or both.  Grimaldi states that it is as of rancid butter; others say it resembles chloroform.  It is said to be sometimes perceptible for a distance of several feet and to last for several hours after coitus.  (Various quotations are given by Gould and Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, section on “Human Odors,” pp. 397-403.) St. Philip Neri is said to have been able to recognize a chaste man by smell.

During menstruation girls and young women frequently give off an odor which is quite distinct from that of the menstrual fluid, and is specially marked in the breath, which may smell of chloroform or violets.  Pouchet (confirmed by Raciborski, Traite de la Menstruation, 1868, p. 74) stated that about a day before the onset of menstruation a characteristic smell is exuded.  Menstruating girls are also said sometimes to give off a smell of leather.  Aubert, of Lyons (as quoted by Galopin), describes the odor of the skin of a woman during menstruation as an agreeable aromatic or acidulous perfume of chloroform character.  By some this is described as emanating especially from the armpits.  Sandras (quoted by Raciborski) knew a lady who could always tell by a sensation of faintness and malaise—­apparently due to a sensation of smell—­when she was in contact with a menstruating woman.  I am acquainted with a man, having strong olfactory sympathies and antipathies, who detects the presence of menstruation by smell.  It is said that Hortense Bare, who accompanied her lover, the botanist Commerson, to the Pacific disguised as a man, was recognized by the natives as a woman by means of smell.

Women, like men, frequently give out an odor during coitus or strong sexual excitement.  This odor may be entirely different from that normally emanating from the woman, of an acid or hircine character, and sufficiently strong to remain in a room for a considerable period.  Many of the ancient medical writers (as quoted by Schurigius, Parthenologia, p. 286) described the goaty smell produced by venery, especially in women; they regarded it as specially marked in harlots and in the newly married, and sometimes even considered it a certain sign of defloration.  The case has been recorded of a woman who emitted a rose odor for two days after coitus (McBride, quoted by Kiernan in an interesting summary, “Odor in Pathology,” Doctor’s Magazine, December, 1900).  There was, it is said (Journal des Savans 1684, p. 39, quoting from the Journal d’Angleterre) a monk in Prague who could recognize by smell the chastity of the women who approached him. (This monk, it is added, when he died, was composing a new science of odors.)