topics: |  biologhy | human | perception | senses | science

    What I wish to explore in this book is the origin and evolution of the
    senses, how they vary from culture to culture, their range and
    reputation, their folklore and science, the sensory idioms we use to
    speak of the world, and some special topics that I hope will exhilarate
    other sensuists as they do me, and cause less-extravagant minds at least
    to pause a moment and marvel. (p. xix)

"The pen is the tongue of the mind" - Cervantes (opening the Synesthesia
chapter)

hooked into our artificial controlled environments, modern man tends to
ignore the world of physical sensation - indeed it has become fashoinable
to do so says Ackerman.  In lyrical prose (she is also a poet), Ackerman
revels in he sensations of touch, taste, hearing, vision, and smell.
Encased in pantyhose or three-piece suits, surrounded by smog, noise and
fluorescent light, caught up in the daily rush, we miss the variations of
scent in a rose garden, the flash of green in the sky just after sunset, or
the sensations offered by a whiff of eucalyptus at a corner flower stall.
In her quest for the corporeal, Ackerman takes us to a Manhattan perfume
laboratory, an aromatic massage session, and a sumptuous high-protein lunch
for revitalizing the mind.  On the way we discover intriguing tidbits as:
ginger fights motion sickness better than Dramamine; Charles Dickens
instantly reexperienced the anguish of his early years whenever he caught a
whiff of a certain kind of paste; and ""Caesar,"" ""kaiser,"" and ""tsar""
all mean ""long-haired,"" which means virile.  Occasionally a bit
overbounding in her her enthusiasm, her passion for the real world
ultimately carries the story.

The first, and more extensive chapter deals with our primordinate sense,
smell.  Here we encounter olfactory
prose by many authors like Proust, Colette, Flaubert, Milton, Shakespeare,
and Huysmans, and many interesting observations - e.g. a disciple of Freud
claims that men make love to women because their wombs smell of herring brine
- they are trying to get back to the primordial ocean (p.21).  This is
justified on the grounds that the etymology of in many Indo-European
languages are from the IE root pu, to decay or rot (Fr. putain, Italian
putta, puta in Sp or Port).  Asiatics don't have as many apocrine glands at
the base of hair follicles so they have less body odor; which explains why
there is so much scenting of the rooom and air and not much of the body.
Helen Keller could tell what a person was doing just by the smell.  Are
there human pheromones? At least none are known.
Did you know that a Victorian woman would present her lover a "love apple" -
a peeled apple kept in her armpit until it was saturated with sweat.  Then
the sweetheart could inhale it (she is silent on whether it would be eaten).
But no, female genital secretions do not work as an aphrodisiac.

Types of fart listed in a medical journal:
   1. Slider (released slowly and noiselessly, as in a crowded elevator,
   2. open sphincter, or "pooh", hotter and more aromatic.
   3. the staccato or drum-beat type, best passed in privacy.
Flatus frequency may go Upto 70 farts in a 4-h period.

For smell (and the history of perfume), nothing to match the detailed dark
exuberance of Patrick Suskind's [suskind-patrick_perfume] In many parts,
reminded me of Trumble-Angus' [trumble-angus_history-of-the-smile]

Diane Ackerman has a Ph.D from Cornell University, and has written
non-fiction and poetry, including The Moon by Whale Light (1991), Jaguar of
Sweet Laughter (1993), A Natural History Of Love (1994), and An Alchemy of
Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain (2005).