If the body odors tend to develop at puberty, to be maintained during sexual life, especially in sympathy with conditions of sexual disturbance, and to become diminished in old age, being thus a kind of secondary sexual character, we should expect them to be less marked in those cases in which the primary sexual characters are less marked. It is possible that this is actually the case. Hagen, in his _Sexuelle Osphrésiologie_, quotes from Roubaud's _Traité de l'Impuissance_ the statement that the body odor of the castrated differs from that of normal individuals. Burdach had previously stated that the odor of the eunuch is less marked than that of the normal man.
It is thus possible that defective sexual development tends to be associated with corresponding olfactory defect. Heschl[37] has reported a case in which absence of both olfactory nerves coincided with defective development of the sexual organs. Féré remarks that the impotent show a repugnance for sexual odors. Dr. Kiernan informs me that in women after oöphorectomy he has noted a tendency to diminished (and occasionally increased) sense of smell. These questions, however, await more careful and extended observation.
A very significant transition from the phenomena of personal odor to those of sexual attraction by personal odor is to be found in the fact that among the peoples inhabiting a large part of the world's surface the ordinary salutation between friends is by mutual smelling of the person. In some form or another the method of salutation by applying the nose to the nose, face, or hand of a friend in greeting is found throughout a large part of the Pacific, among the Papuans, the Eskimo, the hill tribes of India, in Africa, and elsewhere.[38] Thus, among a certain hill tribe in India, according to Lewin, they smell a friend's cheek: "in their language, they do not say, 'Give me a kiss,' but they say 'Smell me.'" And on the Gambia, according to F. Moore, "When the men salute the women, they, instead of shaking their hands, put it up to their noses, and smell twice to the back of it." Here we have very clearly a recognition of the emotional value of personal odor widely prevailing throughout the world. The salutation on an olfactory basis may, indeed, be said to be more general than the salutation on a tactile basis on which European handshaking rests, each form involving one of the two most intimate and emotional senses. The kiss may be said to be a development proceeding both from the olfactory and the tactile bases, with perhaps some other elements as well, and is too complex to be regarded as a phenomenon of either purely tactile or purely olfactory origin.[39]