WHAT SMELLS MEAN

Evening Star, Issue 18809, 6 December 1924, Page 20

WHAT SMELLS MEAN

ANCESTRAL MEMORIES. \ 1 i The odor of your dinner, as it cooks, pleases you because you remember how your grandfather thousands of degrees back liked his, as it roasted over the coals o£ his primitive fire. Many smells evoke these primitive racial memories, we are told by JDr E. E. Free in an article written for the M'Clure Newspaper Syndicate (Now York). In fact, the sense of smell is more closely connected with the evolution of the human brain, Dr Free thinks, than any other. The writer himself has conducted a special investigation on this sense, with apparatus that he describes, and he concludes that smells affect human (motions of tho kind commonly called “feelings”; those of pleasure, of depression, of irritability, and the like. For instance, he says, there is a certain well-known chemical, the smell of which is so depressing that continual breathing of its odor may bring even healthy and normal individuals to the verge of suicide. Certain other odors are pleasing and exciting. Some—lemon and oranges are examples—are pleasing but calming, at least to the majority of people. There is a tremendous field for psychological investigation in all this, Dr Free tells us • —a field that no ono lias ever studied, except in the most superficial way. He proceeds: j

Practically all the react ions to smells are emotional effects on the. part of our mind that is called “unconscious.” They are not reasonable, intellectual reactions at all. For example, I know two people who are instantly rendered irritable by the smell of horseradish. They want to fight; to hurt some one. One of them described to mo the great waves of hatred and irritation that roll .over his entire mentality tho instant the odor of horseradish enters his nostrils.

Tins is not a conscious thing at all. He does not recognise tho smell of horseradish. Indeed, as ho told me, he had suffered for years from these sudden and unaccountable fits of auger, mostly at the table, before ho identified their cause at all. Horseradish was not suspected until its effect was discovered accidentally. Now, whenever lie feels a fit like this coming on, he merely looks around foi tho offending horseradish bottle, has i. removed, and becomes again Ins normal, sunny self.

This case is unusual, I imagine, only in that tho cause of the curious emotional “ mood ” has been discovered. Many people have these spells of causeless anger, depression, exaltation, or other emotional

feeling. Most physicians ascribe llieni cither to pure imagination or to some physical upset. “ There is sound psychology underneath the ancient use of incense U> place the clnr.-.’ligoer in the proper mental attitude for worship. Moods and smells may go together much more closely than wc think. The reason why smells affect so profoundly die unconscious, moody parts ol the human mind is not far to seek. Smell and tie' mind grew up together. The human brain began in primitive nervous organs that are much like the modern nerves of smell.”

Millions of years ago, says Dr Free, the

highest forms of life on earth were little moving drops of jelly. They had only cue sense, a primitive sense, of touch. Creatures like this still exist. Millions can be found in the water of ponds and ditches everywhere. They have only one sense—a touch sense in the skin; yet it does, imperfectly, everything (hat our five senses do for u.s. We read further;

"As evilutioi went on two things happened to this primitive senso-skin. Parts of jt got folded into the body. Some of these made the special senses; the eye, the ear, the nose, the nerves of taste. Others of the infolded parts made the nerves and ultimately the brain. “ The organs of sense are not merely connected to the brain; the brain is an extension and growth from them. And of the modern special senses that of smell remains both closely associated with the brain and not much altoivd from its primitive condition. What won.lei', then, that its effects on the ancient, unconscious, and emotional part of the brain .should be so profound '! “ The psychology of smells is still a storehouse of racial and pre-racial memories. For example, the smell that is most nearly certain to be liked by everyone is the smell of meat that has just begun to cool;. A close second to it is the smell of wood smoke that is not too strong. This is undoubtedly a racial memory. For thousands of years our savage ancestors Jived around camp fires and ale meat toasted' over the coals.

“ Dangers were recognised then by unexpected noises or by unusual sights. By smells, on ’.ho oilier hand, the pre-human creatures were accistomed to recognise not danger, but familiarity. It is very probable, indeed, that this ancient signal of strangeness or of likeness is with us still, overlaid with a veneer of intelligence. “ It has long been known to close observers of humanity that different races have diqercnt bodily odors, and that these play a large part in the utterly unreasonable racial antipathies that are still so rampant in the world. May not the same thing bo true between individuals? Unreasonable likes and dislikes between people are certainly common enough. Nobody knows what causes them. Why not slight odors, unconsciously perceived, an 1 odor of strangeness ’ that arouses some latent memory buried these many millenniums in the cellars of our minds 1 “ The emotional life of mankind is no less important than tiro intellectual. How you fool each day; whether you are Irappv or depressed, zestful or lazy, is no less important than how you think. “It seems fantastic to think of some day stopping a riot with a pleasant smell, but I am convinced that it is not fantastic at all. It is much more reasonable than stopping riots with words, and even that has been done. “ If you want to educate men or flatter them or argue with them, approach them through their eyes or their ears. Those are ways 10 reach the intellectual mind. But if you merely want to please them or to make them happy, there is a better way. It is through the nose. Some day science will know this way well enough to use it."