average in such insanity nearly 50 per
cent, of the hallucinations affect smell and taste; she refers
also to the olfactory hallucinations of great religious leaders,
Francis of Assisi, Katherina Emmerich, Lazzaretti, and the
Anabaptists.

It may well be, as Zwaardemaker has suggested in his _Physiologie des
Geruchs_, that the nasal congestion at menstruation and similar phenomena
are connected with that association of smell and sexuality which is
observable throughout the whole animal world, and that the congestion
brings about a temporary increase of olfactory sensitiveness during the
stage of sexual excitation.[43] Careful investigation of olfactory
acuteness would reveal the existence of such menstrual heightening of its
acuity.

In a few exceptional, but still quite healthy people, smell would appear
to possess an emotional predominance which it cannot be said to possess in
the average person. These exceptional people are of what Binet in his
study of sexual fetichism calls olfactive type; such persons form a group
which, though of smaller size and less importance, is fairly comparable to
the well-known groups of visual type, of auditory type, and of psychomotor
type. Such people would be more attentive to odors, more moved by
olfactory sympathies and antipathies, than are ordinary people. For these,
it may well be, the supremacy accorded to olfactory influences in Jaeger's
_Entdeckung der Seele_, though extravagantly incorrect for ordinary
persons, may appear quite reasonable.

It is certain also that a great many neurasthenic people, and
particularly those who are sexually neurasthenic, are peculiarly
susceptible to olfactory influences. A number of eminent poets and
novelists--especially, it would appear, in France--seem to be in this
case. Baudelaire, of all great poets, has most persistently and most
elaborately emphasized the imaginative and emotional significance of odor;
the _Fleurs du Mal_ and many of the _Petits Poemes en Prose_ are, from
this point of view, of great interest. There can be no doubt that in
Baudelaire's own imaginative and emotional life the sense of smell played
a highly important part; and that, in his own words, odor was to him what
music is to others. Throughout Zola's novels--and perhaps more especially
in _La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret_--there is an extreme insistence on odors of
every kind. Prof. Leopold Bernard wrote an elaborate study of this aspect
of Zola's work[4