Binet maintains that these articles play the part of the
"fetich" in early theology. It is said that the favors given by
the ladies to the knights in the Middle Ages were not only tokens
of remembrance and appreciation, but sexual excitants as well. In
his remarkable "Osphresiologie," Cloquet calls attention to the
sexual pleasure excited by the odors of flowers, and tells how
Richelieu excited his sexual functions by living in an atmosphere
loaded with these perfumes. In the Orient the harems are perfumed
with intense extracts and flowers, in accordance with the strong
belief in the aphrodisiac effect of odors.
Krafft-Ebing quotes several interesting cases in which the
connection between the olfactory and sexual functions is
strikingly verified.
"The case of Henry III shows that contact with a person's
perspiration may be the exciting cause of passionate love. At the
betrothal feast of the King of Navarre and Margaret of Valois he
accidentally dried his face with a garment of Maria of Cleves
which was moist with her perspiration. Although she was the bride
of the Prince of Conde, Henry immediately conceived such a
passion for her that he could not resist it, and, as history
shows, made her very unhappy.
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