We have seen
that the Chinese poet vaunts the musky odor of his mistress's armpits,
while another Oriental saying concerning the attractive woman is that "her
navel is filled with musk." Persian literature contains many references to
musk as an attractive body odor, and Firdusi speaks of a woman's hair as
"a crown of musk," while the Arabian poet Motannabi says of his mistress
that "her hyacinthine hair smells sweeter than Scythian musk." Galopin
stated that he knew women whose natural odor of musk (and less frequently
of ambergris) was sufficiently strong to impart to a bath in less than an
hour a perfume due entirely to the exhalations of the musky body; it must
be added that Galopin was an enthusiast in this matter.
The special significance of musk from our present point of view lies not
only in the fact that we here have a perfume, widely scattered throughout
nature and often in an agreeable form, which is at the same time a very
frequent personal odor in man. Musk is the odor which not only in the
animals to which it has given a name, but in many others, is a
specifically sexual odor, chiefly emitted during the sexual season. The
sexual odors, indeed, of most animals seem to be modifications of musk.
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