John's worts (_Hypericum hircinum_), as well as the
_Chenopodium_. Zwaardemaker considers it probable that the odor of the
vagina belongs to the same group, as well as the odor of semen (which
Haller called _odor aphrodisiacus_), which last odor is also found, as
Cloquet pointed out, in the flowers of the common berberry (_Berberis
vulgaris_) and in the chestnut. A very remarkable and significant example
of the same odor seems to occur in the case of the flowers of the henna
plant, the white-flowered Lawsonia (_Lawsonia inermis_), so widely used in
some Mohammedan lands for dyeing the nails and other parts of the body.
"These flowers diffuse the sweetest odor," wrote Sonnini in Egypt a
century ago; "the women delight to wear them, to adorn their houses with
them, to carry them to the baths, to hold them in their hands, and to
perfume their bosoms with them. They cannot patiently endure that
Christian and Jewish women shall share the privilege with them. It is very
remarkable that the perfume of the henna flowers, when closely inhaled, is
almost entirely lost in a very decided spermatic odor. If the flowers are
crushed between the fingers this odor prevails, and is, indeed, the only
one perceptible.
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