Pardo Bazan, who knows them well, remarks in her novel, La Tribuna, which deals with life in a tobacco factory, that “the acuity of the sense of smell of the cigarreras is notable, and it would seem that instead of blunting the nasal membrane the tobacco makes the olfactory nerves keener.”

“It was the same as if I was in a sweet apple garden, from the sweetness that came to me when the light wind passed over them and stirred their clothes,” a woman is represented as saying concerning a troop of handsome men in the Irish sagas (Cuchulain of Muirthemne, p. 161).  The pleasure and excitement experienced by a woman in the odor of her lover is usually felt concerning a vague and mixed odor which may be characteristic, but is not definitely traceable to any specific bodily sexual odor.  The general odor of the man she loves, one woman states, is highly, sometimes even overwhelmingly, attractive to her; but the specific odor of the male sexual organs which she describes as fishy has no attraction.  A man writes that in his relations with women he has never been able to detect that they were influenced by the axillary or other specific odors.  A woman writes:  “To me any personal odor, as that of perspiration, is very disagreeable, and the healthy naked human body is very free from any odor.  Fresh perspiration has no disagreeable smell; it is only by retention in the clothing that it becomes objectionable.  The faint smell of smoke which lingers round men who smoke much is rather exciting to me, but only when it is very faint.  If at all strong it becomes disagreeable.  As most of the men who have attracted me have been great smokers, there is doubtless a direct association of ideas.  It has only once occurred to me that an indifferent unpleasant smell became attractive in connection with some particular person.  In this case it was the scent of stale tobacco, such as comes from the end of a cold cigar or cigarette.  It was, and is now, very disagreeable to me, but, for the time and in connection with a particular person, it seemed to me more delightful and exciting than the most delicious perfume.  I think, however, only a very strong attraction could overcome a dislike of this sort, and I doubt if I could experience such a twist-round if it had been a personal odor.  Stale tobacco, though nasty, conveys no mentally disagreeable idea.  I mean it does not suggest dirt or unhealthiness.”

It is probably significant of the somewhat considerable part which, in one way or another, odors and perfumes play in the emotional life of women, that, of the 4 women whose sexual histories are recorded in Appendix B of vol. iii of these Studies, all are liable to experience sexual effects from olfactory stimuli, 3 of them from personal odors (though this fact is not in every case brought out in the histories as recorded), while of the 8 men not one has considered his olfactory experiences in this respect as worthy