In northern
countries, where the use of perfumes is chiefly cultivated by women, it is
by women that this sexual influence is most liable to be felt. In the
South and in the East it appears to be at least equally often experienced
by men. Thus, in Italy Mantegazza remarks that "many men of strong sexual
temperament cannot visit with impunity a laboratory of essences and
perfumes."[56] In the East we find it stated in the Islamic book entitled
_The Perfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaoui_ that the use of perfumes by women,
as well as by men, excites to the generative act. It is largely in
reliance on this fact that in many parts of the world, especially among
Eastern peoples and occasionally among ourselves in Europe, women have
been accustomed to perfume the body and especially the vulva.[57]
It seems highly probable that, as has been especially emphasized by Hagen,
perfumes were primitively used by women, not as is sometimes the case in
civilization, with the idea of disguising any possible natural odor, but
with the object of heightening and fortifying the natural odor.[58] If the
primitive man was inclined to disparage a woman whose odor was slight or
imperceptible,--turning away from her with contempt, as the Polynesian
turned away from the ladies of Sydney: "They have no smell!"--women would
inevitably seek to supplement any natural defects in this respect, and to
accentuate their odorous qualities, in the same way as by corsets and
bustles, even in civilization, they have sought to accentuate the sexual
saliencies of their bodies.
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