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Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939

"Sexual Selection In Man"

[67] Naecke has also recorded the case of a shoe fetichist
who declared that the sexual attraction of shoes (usually his wife's) lay
largely in the odor of the leather.[68] Krafft-Ebing, again, brings
forward a case of shoe fetichism in which the significant fact is
mentioned that the subject bought a pair of leather cuffs to smell while
masturbating.[69] Restif de la Bretonne, who was somewhat of a shoe
fetichist, appears to have enjoyed smelling shoes. It is not probable that
the odor of leather explains the whole of shoe fetichism,--as we shall see
when, in another "Study," this question comes before us--and in many cases
it cannot be said to enter at all; it is, however, one of the factors.
Such a conclusion is further supported by the fact that by many the odor
of new shoes is sometimes desired as an adjuvant to coitus. It is in the
experience of prostitutes that such a device is not infrequent. Naecke
mentions that a colleague of his was informed by a prostitute that several
of her clients desired the odor of new shoes in the room, and that she was
accustomed to obtain the desired perfume by holding her shoes for a moment
over the flame of a spirit lamp.
The direct sexual influence of the odor of leather is, however, more
conclusively proved by those instances in which it exists apart from shoes
or other objects having any connection with the human body.


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