The language of smell

Press, 15 April 1978, Page 15

The language of smell

ANTHONY SAVILL

completes his series of

articles on the role played by body smells in human communication.

No other mammal abuses its skin and scent glands to the extent that man does. If many animals washed, shaved and scented their bodies as we humans do, they would be in complete social chaos. Almost certainly they would be headed for extinction. Man survives, and the chaos of modern society is not total. But in the light of recent findings on the importance natural body scents or pheromones playin human communication, many social aberrations may at least in part be attributable to our preoccupation with body hygiene. All the subtle natural body scents we recognise each other by, together with those that may convey feelings of love, excitement, anxiety, hostility, and fear, literally go down the plughole.

Up to several times a day we plunge our protesting bodies into hot baths or showers, and vigorously wash off our own biological scents and oils which have taken millions of years to evolve. We then replace them with commercial “sexy” per-

fumes which in reality are often no more than the diluted extracts from the scent glands of other, unrelated, mammalian species — such as the musk deer. So effectively have we been conditions by modern society to conceal our natural body scents that cosmetics now rank among the top money making industries. Unbiological though it is to wash and deodorise ourselves as frequently as we do. the atmospheric grime and over-abundance of unpleasant human stress pheromones in modern society make it a necessity. Despite the fact that our sense of smell has been considerably reduced during our evolution it is still surprisingly efficient — particularly so when we are excited. The side walls of our nose contain a spongy erectile tissue which actually causes our nose to “inflate” during arousal. However, because we consciously use our sense ot smell so little, we have no precise language to describe the different smells around us.

Even the ability to detect certain smells varies from one individual to the next. Just as some people are colour blind, others of us are “smell blind.” In a recent survey it was found that the smell of musk could be detected by all the black people tested, but not by 7.2 per cent of the Europeans. There are also certain animal odours that women can smell but males and young girls cannot.

Some women may also have found to their embarrassment that just as we humans are attracted to the smell of deer musk, so do animals such as bulls, goats, and monKt i r' e odour of women attractive.

The scents many humans find the most arousing are the musky one, and despite the television commercials even the armpit odour and that of the feet are an excitant for many individuals. Musk is an important component of our arousal pheromones, so its popularity in perfumes is not surprising. So sensitive are we to this scent that as adults we can detect the presence of musk,

even when it Is diluted to one part in eight million parts of air. Groddeck, the bright but eccentric pupil of Sigmund Freud, would shudder at our indiscriminate use of artificial skin scents and deodorants. As he once said, “Even the most learned man has to let his nose decide for him in matters of love.” The time may be at hand when deodorants, intimate and otherwise, rank with environmental pollution, as they already do among a liberated minority. Although the field of research into human nheromones is still in its infancy, it may well play an important role in the medicine and psychiatry of the future. The minute concentrations at which some pheromones are effective compared with the dosage of modern systemic drugs, makes it especially worthy of examination. Who knows, we may live to see “odour therapy” move out of the realm of fringe medicine, into a field with wider implications, some beneficial, some frankly disquieting.