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Bionanotechnology: Emerging Applications
of Bionanomaterials
This page intentionally left blank
 Micro & Nano Technologies Series
Bionanotechnology: Emerging
Applications of
Bionanomaterials
Edited by
Ahmed Barhoum
NanoStruc Research Group, Chemistry Department, Faculty of
Science, Helwan University, Ain Helwan, Cairo, Egypt; School of
Chemical Sciences, Fraunhofer Project Centre, Dublin City University,
Dublin, Ireland
Jaison Jeevanandam
CQM - Centro de Quı́mica da Madeira, MMRG, Universidade da
Madeira, Campus da Penteada, Funchal, Portugal
Michael K. Danquah
Chemical Engineering Department, University of Tennessee,
Chattanooga, TN, United States
Elsevier
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Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
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Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance
Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher
(other than as may be noted herein).
Notices
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our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become
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ISBN: 978-0-12-823915-5

For information on all Elsevier publications visit our website at

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Publisher: Matthew Deans

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Cover Designer: Greg Harris

Typeset by TNQ Technologies

Contents

Contributors.................................................................................................... xiii

SECTION 1: Energy production and energy storage

Chapter 1: Bionanotechnology and Bionanomaterials: Emerging Applications,
Market, and Commercialization........................................................................... 3
Jaison Jeevanandam, Vedarethinam Vadanasundari, Sharadwata Pan, Ahmed Barhoum and
Michael K. Danquah
1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................3
2 Bionanomaterials: emerging applications .....................................................................4
3 Energy production, conversion, and storage .................................................................4
3.1 Biofuel cells ............................................................................................................ 5
3.2 Bionanomaterial-based biodiesel ............................................................................ 6
3.3 Metal/metal oxideebased nanocatalysts ................................................................ 6
3.4 Carbon-based nanocatalysts.................................................................................... 8
3.5 Biobatteries............................................................................................................ 10
4 Environmental protection and improvements .............................................................12
4.1 Air filtration........................................................................................................... 12
4.2 Water treatment ..................................................................................................... 13
4.3 Soil treatment ........................................................................................................ 16
4.4 Plant protection ..................................................................................................... 17
5 Biomedical applications...............................................................................................17
5.1 Drug delivery ........................................................................................................ 17
5.2 Wound healing ...................................................................................................... 18
5.3 Tissue engineering applications............................................................................ 19
5.4 Medical implants................................................................................................... 19
5.5 Biosensors ............................................................................................................. 20
6 Agriculture and food production industries ................................................................20
6.1 Nanofertilizers ....................................................................................................... 21
6.2 Pesticides ............................................................................................................... 22
6.3 Food preservation.................................................................................................. 23
6.4 Food storage .......................................................................................................... 25
7 Other applications ........................................................................................................25
7.1 Textiles .................................................................................................................. 26

v
Contents

7.2 Paper and wood..................................................................................................... 27

7.3 Automotive ............................................................................................................ 28
8 Bionanomaterials: market growth and regulations .....................................................30
9 Commercialization of bionanomaterials......................................................................31
10 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................32
References..........................................................................................................................32
Chapter 2: Smart bionanomaterials for the removal of contaminants
from wastewater.............................................................................................. 45
Kanakalakshmi Annamalai, Harisma Rameshbabu, Karthikeyan Mahendhran and
Murugappan Ramanathan
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................45
2 Biopolymer nanofibers in the treatment of wastewater..............................................49
3 Bioinspired nanocomposite materials in the removal of environmental
contaminants.................................................................................................................51
4 Photocatalytic applications of bionanomaterials in pollution abetment ....................52
5 Nanozymes for enzymatic degradation of pollutants .................................................54
6 Biogenic nanoparticles in the removal of hazardous contaminants...........................55
7 Nanobiochar in the removal of organic and inorganic pollutants..............................58
8 Adsorption mechanism and influence of physicochemical factors ............................59
9 Limitations of bionanomaterials in wastewater treatment..........................................64
10 Conclusion and future perspective ..............................................................................65
References..........................................................................................................................65

SECTION 2: Environmental applications

Chapter 3: Bionanomaterials-mediated seed priming for sustainable
agricultural production ..................................................................................... 77
Anurag Malik, Himani Punia, Nirmal Singh and Pradeep Singh
Abbreviations.....................................................................................................................77
1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................77
2 A brief history of seed priming.....................................................................................80
3 Seed priming and its application in agriculture............................................................81
4 Application of different priming approaches and priming substances ........................83
4.1 Nutripriming............................................................................................................ 84
4.2 Hydropriming .......................................................................................................... 84
4.3 Solid matrix priming............................................................................................... 85
4.4 Osmopriming........................................................................................................... 86
4.5 Hormopriming ......................................................................................................... 86
4.6 Chemical priming.................................................................................................... 87
4.7 Biopriming............................................................................................................... 87
5 Nanopriming: a novel way for seed germination and seedling growth.......................88
6 Future perspective ..........................................................................................................91
7 Conclusion......................................................................................................................93
References..........................................................................................................................94
vi
 Contents

Chapter 4: Reconnoitering bionanomaterials for mitigation of abiotic

stress in plants .............................................................................................. 101
Himani Punia, Jayanti Tokas, Anurag Malik and Shikha Yashveer
Abbreviations...................................................................................................................101
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................101
2 Bionanomaterials: a new frontier in plant growth and development.........................104
3 Mechanism of action of different bionanoparticles in plants.....................................105
4 Bionanomaterials: use under different stress conditions ............................................109
4.1 Bionanoparticles under drought............................................................................ 110
4.2 Bionanoparticles under salinity ............................................................................ 115
5 Environmental and safety issues .................................................................................118
6 Future perspective ........................................................................................................119
7 Conclusion....................................................................................................................120
References........................................................................................................................120

SECTION 3: Biomedical applications

Chapter 5: Emerging applications of bionanomaterials in medicine
and drug delivery ........................................................................................... 129
Dalapathi Gugulothu and Dharmendra Kumar Khatri
Abbreviations...................................................................................................................129
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................130
2 Inorganic bionanomaterials..........................................................................................132
2.1 Metal nanoparticles and metal oxide nanoparticles............................................. 132
2.2 Other inorganic bionanomaterials ........................................................................ 133
2.3 Carbon bionanomaterials ...................................................................................... 134
2.4 Polymeric bionanomaterials.................................................................................. 142
2.5 Lipid bionanomaterials ......................................................................................... 158
2.6 Others .................................................................................................................... 168
3 Conclusions and future prospects................................................................................175
Acknowledgments............................................................................................................176
References........................................................................................................................176
Chapter 6: Polymer-based bionanomaterials for biomedical applications .............. 187
Tabassum Khan and Akshita Chauhan
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................187
2 Types of polymeric nanomaterials ..............................................................................189
2.1 Natural polymeric nanomaterials ......................................................................... 189
2.2 Engineered polymeric nanomaterials ................................................................... 190
2.3 Biosynthesized polymeric nanomaterials ............................................................. 191
2.4 Chemosynthesis polymeric nanomaterials ........................................................... 193
3 Biofunctionalized nanocellulosic materials.................................................................194
3.1 Nanocellulose-based biodegradable polymers ..................................................... 194

vii
Contents

3.2 Nanocellulose-based thermoplastic polymers ...................................................... 197

3.3 Porous nanocellulose composites ......................................................................... 198
4 Bioinspired polymeric nanocomposites.......................................................................200
4.1 Polymeric nanocomposite hydrogels.................................................................... 200
4.2 Bioactive silicate-based nanocomposites ............................................................. 201
4.3 Bioinspired hydroxyapatite nanocomposites........................................................ 202
4.4 Bioinspired Rosette Nanotube composites........................................................... 202
4.5 Graphene-enhanced polymeric nanocomposites .................................................. 202
4.6 Polymeric nanocomposites loaded with metallic nanoparticles.......................... 203
4.7 Mechanically stiff interpenetrating networks....................................................... 203
4.8 Spatially controlled hydrogel nanocomposites .................................................... 204
5 Biomedical applications...............................................................................................204
5.1 Dental and biomedical implants........................................................................... 205
5.2 Targeted drug delivery .......................................................................................... 206
5.3 Bionanomaterials for therapy of defective joints and bones............................... 207
5.4 Bone tissue engineering........................................................................................ 208
5.5 Biosensor platforms .............................................................................................. 209
5.6 Vaccine development ............................................................................................ 210
5.7 Fluorescent polymeric nanovehicles .................................................................... 211
5.8 Fluorescent bioimaging......................................................................................... 211
5.9 Stem cell imaging ................................................................................................. 212
6 Future perspective ........................................................................................................213
7 Conclusion....................................................................................................................213
References........................................................................................................................214
Chapter 7: Photocatalytic metal bionanocomposites for biomedical
applications ................................................................................................... 227
Selma Hamimed and Abdelwaheb Chatti
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................227
2 Overview of bionanocomposites .................................................................................229
3 Photocatalytic activity of metal bionanocomposites ..................................................231
3.1 TiO2 bionanocomposites....................................................................................... 231
3.2 Mixed metal oxide bionanocomposites................................................................ 232
3.3 Polymeremetal and graphene metal bionanocomposites.................................... 235
3.4 Other metal bionanocomposites ........................................................................... 236
4 Biomedical applications of photocatalytic metal bionanocomposites .......................236
4.1 Drug delivery ........................................................................................................ 237
4.2 Biosensor and bioimaging .................................................................................... 240
4.3 Bone and cartilage tissues engineering ................................................................ 241
4.4 Antimicrobial and antioxidant agents .................................................................. 245
4.5 Other biomedical applications .............................................................................. 248
5 Conclusion....................................................................................................................250
References........................................................................................................................250

viii
 Contents

Chapter 8: Bionanomaterials for wound healing applications .............................. 259

Itisha Chummun, Honita Ramphul, Dhanjay Jhurry and Archana Bhaw-Luximon
List of abbreviations........................................................................................................259
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................260
2 Challenges of skin and skeletal tissue wounds...........................................................262
2.1 Burns ..................................................................................................................... 263
2.2 Diabetic wounds.................................................................................................... 264
2.3 Bone fracture......................................................................................................... 266
2.4 Ligament and tendon damage .............................................................................. 267
3 Nanobiomaterials used as scaffolds for skin and skeletal tissue regeneration ..........269
3.1 Cellulose-based scaffolds...................................................................................... 269
3.2 Seaweeds polysaccharide-based scaffolds............................................................ 274
3.3 Sucrose-based scaffolds ........................................................................................ 279
4 Peptide hydrogels for wound healing..........................................................................280
5 Nanobiomaterials and natural molecules to enhance biological performance ..........284
6 Commercially available wound healing scaffolds ......................................................286
7 Conclusion and future perspectives in wound tissue regeneration ............................291
References........................................................................................................................292
Further reading ................................................................................................................304
Chapter 9: Polymeric bionanomaterials for diabetes applications ........................ 305
Aristeidis Papagiannopoulos, Evdokia Stefanopoulou, Eleni Vlassi and Stergios Pispas
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................305
2 Delivery of antidiabetic medicines using nanoparticles .............................................307
2.1 Chitosan-based nanoparticles................................................................................ 307
2.2 Nanoparticles of other naturally occurring biopolymers..................................... 313
2.3 Nanoparticles of synthetic biopolymers............................................................... 316
3 Hydrogels employed for the treatment of diabetes ....................................................318
4 Future prospects ...........................................................................................................325
5 Conclusion....................................................................................................................326
References........................................................................................................................327

SECTION 4: Constructions and other applications

Chapter 10: Nanohydrogels for targeted drug delivery systems........................... 333
Lalita Devi, Hitesh Chopra and Punam Gaba
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................333
2 Structure of nanoparticleehydrogel composites.........................................................334
2.1 Nano- and microgel composites ........................................................................... 334
2.2 Macroscopic hydrogel composites ....................................................................... 334
3 Synthesis method .........................................................................................................335
3.1 Bulk polymerization.............................................................................................. 336
3.2 Solution polymerization........................................................................................ 336

ix
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Contents

3.3 Dispersion method ................................................................................................ 336

3.4 Grafting to support................................................................................................ 337
3.5 Polymerization by irradiation ............................................................................... 337
4 Gelation mechanism.....................................................................................................337
5 Stimuli-responsive hydrogels.......................................................................................338
6 Intelligent carrier system .............................................................................................339
6.1 pH-based intelligent system.................................................................................. 339
6.2 Temperature-based intelligent system .................................................................. 341
7 Applications..................................................................................................................341
7.1 Wound healing ...................................................................................................... 341
7.2 Malignancy (cancer) treatment............................................................................. 343
7.3 Ocular drug delivery ............................................................................................. 343
7.4 Nasal and vaccine delivery................................................................................... 344
7.5 Tissue engineering ................................................................................................ 344
7.6 Vaginal delivery .................................................................................................... 345
7.7 Transdermal delivery ............................................................................................ 346
8 Patents ..........................................................................................................................347
9 Future directions and conclusion.................................................................................349
References........................................................................................................................349
Chapter 11: Bicontinuous particle-stabilized emulsions: structural control
for targeted applications................................................................................. 357
Stephen Boakye-Ansah and Matthew Schwenger
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................357
2 Methods of bijel fabrication ........................................................................................361
2.1 Thermal quenching of biphasic liquids via spinodal
decomposition ....................................................................................................... 361
2.2 Solvent transfereinduced phase separation ......................................................... 364
2.3 Direct mixing method ........................................................................................... 368
3 Bijel design and structural control ..............................................................................369
3.1 Controlling the shapes, sizes, and mechanical properties of bijels .................... 370
4 Effect of biological entities in the fabrication, design and structural
control of bijels ............................................................................................................374
5 Applications of bijels...................................................................................................377
5.1 Accessing the liquid domains of bijels for different applications ...................... 377
5.2 Biphasic reactive separations................................................................................ 383
5.3 Food applications .................................................................................................. 383
5.4 Postprocessing bijels into polymeric scaffolds for biomedical
applications............................................................................................................ 385
5.5 Tissue engineering applications............................................................................ 387
6 Conclusion and future perspectives on bijels .............................................................389
References........................................................................................................................392
Further reading ................................................................................................................397

x
 Contents

Chapter 12: A revolutionary breakthrough of bionanomaterials in tissue

engineering and regenerative medicine.............................................................. 399
Prem Shankar, Jaidip Jagtap, Gaurav Sharma, Guru Prasad Sharma, Jitendra Singh,
Madhuri Parashar, Gaurav Kumar, Sonam Mittal, Manish Kumar Sharma, Kapilesh Jadhav
and Deepak Parashar
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................399
2 History and present status............................................................................................401
2.1 History ................................................................................................................... 401
2.2 Present status......................................................................................................... 403
3 Multidimensional bioprinting of tissues and organs...................................................404
3.1 Bioprinting techniques .......................................................................................... 405
3.2 Applications of multidimensional bioprinted tissues
and organs ............................................................................................................. 405
4 Bioprinting and biomodeling of physical and chemical foundation..........................407
4.1 Physical intersections............................................................................................ 408
4.2 Chemical intersections .......................................................................................... 409
5 Regeneration of biomedical products..........................................................................410
6 Next-generation regenerative therapies .......................................................................411
7 Application and challenge: an evolving paradigm .....................................................414
7.1 Skin grafts ........................................................................................................... 423
7.2 Cartilage .............................................................................................................. 423
7.3 Bioengineering of the body organs .................................................................... 424
7.4 Natural or accidental damage to body ............................................................... 424
7.5 Sports medicine................................................................................................... 424
7.6 Partial or total joint replacements ...................................................................... 424
7.7 Organ-on-a-chip .................................................................................................. 425
7.8 Treatment of cancer by using multidimensional models .................................. 425
7.9 Personalized medicine ........................................................................................ 426
7.10 Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine in basic and
medical research.................................................................................................. 426
8 Regulatory affairs in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine .........................427
9 Conclusion and future perspective ..............................................................................432
References........................................................................................................................433
Chapter 13: Bionanomaterials for cancer therapy ............................................. 443
Monireh Ganjali, Mansoureh Ganjali, Mohammad Mahdi Adib Sereshki, Navid Ahmadinasab,
Arash Ghalandarzadeh, Alaa A.A. Aljabali and Ahmed Barhoum
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................443
2 Cancer disease: types and statistics.............................................................................444
3 Anticancer nanocarriers ...............................................................................................445
3.1 Polymeric nanocomposite drug delivery.............................................................. 448
4 Conclusion....................................................................................................................460
References........................................................................................................................460

xi
Contents

Chapter 14: Bionanomaterials for diagnosis and therapy of SARS-CoV-2............ 469

Soubantika Palchoudhury and Snigdha Palchaudhury
1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................469
1.1 Overview ............................................................................................................... 469
1.2 Genome study and nature of n-CoV-2 virus........................................................ 470
1.3 Objective and significance of the chapter............................................................ 472
2 Disinfection ..................................................................................................................472
3 Detection and diagnostics ............................................................................................473
4 Medicine.......................................................................................................................480
5 Vaccine development ...................................................................................................481
6 Perspective....................................................................................................................482
Acknowledgments............................................................................................................484
References........................................................................................................................485
Chapter 15: Drug delivery systems based on nano-herbal medicine ..................... 491
Mansoureh Ganjali, Monireh Ganjali, Alaa A.A. Aljabali and Ahmed Barhoum
1 Introduction ................................................................................................................491
2 History and development of herbal medicines .........................................................492
3 Herbal medicine classifications .................................................................................496
4 Herbal nano-drug delivery system.............................................................................497
5 Roles of nanotechnology in herbal medicines..........................................................503
6 Nanocarriers for herbal medicines ............................................................................504
7 Application of herbal nanomedicines........................................................................516
7.1 Anticancer ........................................................................................................... 516
7.2 Wound healing .................................................................................................... 518
7.3 Tissue engineering .............................................................................................. 519
7.4 Antioxidants ........................................................................................................ 519
8 Toxicity issues............................................................................................................519
9 Future perspective ......................................................................................................521
10 Conclusion..................................................................................................................522
References........................................................................................................................522

Index ............................................................................................................ 531

xii
Contributors

Mohammad Mahdi Adib Sereshki Department of Hematology and Oncology, Iran University of
Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Navid Ahmadinasab Department of Modern Technologies, Mangrove Research Center, University
of Hormozgan, Bandar Abbas, Iran
Alaa A.A. Aljabali Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Tech-
nology, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan
Kanakalakshmi Annamalai Department of Zoology and Microbiology, Thiagarajar College,
Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Ahmed Barhoum NanoStruc Research Group, Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science,
Helwan University, Ain Helwan, Cairo, Egypt; School of Chemical Sciences, Fraunhofer Project
Centre, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
Archana Bhaw-Luximon Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Nanotechnology Unit, Centre for
Biomedical and Biomaterials Research (CBBR), MSIRI Building, University of Mauritius, Réduit,
Mauritius
Stephen Boakye-Ansah Rowan University, Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering, Department
of Chemical Engineering, Glassboro, NJ, United States; Emerging Technologies, DuPont Electronics
& Imaging, Marlborough, MA, United States
Abdelwaheb Chatti Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Carthage,
Faculty of Sciences of Bizerte, Jarzouna, Tunisia
Akshita Chauhan Department of Quality Assurance, SVKM’s Dr. Bhanuben Nanavati College of
Pharmacy, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Hitesh Chopra Chitkara College of Pharmacy, Chitkara University, Rajpura, Punjab, India
Itisha Chummun Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Nanotechnology Unit, Centre for Biomedical
and Biomaterials Research (CBBR), MSIRI Building, University of Mauritius, Réduit, Mauritius
Michael K. Danquah Chemical Engineering Department, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga,
TN, United States
Lalita Devi Department of Pharmaceutics, Amar Shaheed Baba Ajit Singh Jujhar Singh Memorial
College of Pharmacy, Ropar, Punjab, India
Punam Gaba Department of Pharmaceutics, Amar Shaheed Baba Ajit Singh Jujhar Singh Memo-
rial College of Pharmacy, Ropar, Punjab, India

xiii
Contributors

Mansoureh Ganjali Nour Zoha Materials Engineering Research Group (NMERG), Tehran, Iran
Monireh Ganjali Bioengineering Research Group, Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials
Department, Materials and Energy Research Center (MERC), Tehran, Iran
Arash Ghalandarzadeh School of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Iran University of
Science and Technology (IUST), Tehran, Iran
Dalapathi Gugulothu Balaji Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Balaji Group of Institutions,
Warangal Rural, Telangana, India
Selma Hamimed Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Carthage,
Faculty of Sciences of Bizerte, Jarzouna, Tunisia
Kapilesh Jadhav School of Engineering and Technology, Jaipur National University, Jaipur,
Rajasthan, India
Jaidip Jagtap Department of Biomedical Engineering, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee,
WI, United States
Jaison Jeevanandam CQM - Centro de Quı́mica da Madeira, MMRG, Universidade da Madeira,
Campus da Penteada, Funchal, Portugal
Dhanjay Jhurry University of Mauritius, Réduit, Mauritius
Tabassum Khan Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Quality Assurance, SVKM’s Dr.
Bhanuben Nanavati College of Pharmacy, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Dharmendra Kumar Khatri National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research,
Hyderabad, India
Gaurav Kumar Department of Biochemistry, University of Delhi, New Delhi, Delhi, India
Karthikeyan Mahendhran Department of Zoology and Microbiology, Thiagarajar College,
Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Anurag Malik Department of Seed Science & Technology, College of Agriculture, CCS Haryana
Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana, India
Sonam Mittal School of Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India
Snigdha Palchaudhury Department of Geology, Presidency University, Kolkata, West Bengal,
India
Soubantika Palchoudhury Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Dayton, Dayton,
OH, United States
Sharadwata Pan TUM School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising,
Germany
Aristeidis Papagiannopoulos Theoretical and Physical Chemistry Institute, National Hellenic
Research Foundation, Athens, Greece
Deepak Parashar School of Life Sciences, Jaipur National University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India;
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United
States
Madhuri Parashar School of Life Sciences, Jaipur National University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India;
Division of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States

xiv
 Contributors

Stergios Pispas Theoretical and Physical Chemistry Institute, National Hellenic Research Founda-
tion, Athens, Greece
Himani Punia Department of Biochemistry, College of Basic Sciences & Humanities, CCS Har-
yana Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana, India
Murugappan Ramanathan Department of Zoology and Microbiology, Thiagarajar College,
Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Harisma Rameshbabu Department of Zoology and Microbiology, Thiagarajar College, Madurai,
Tamil Nadu, India
Honita Ramphul Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Nanotechnology Unit, Centre for Biomedical
and Biomaterials Research (CBBR), MSIRI Building, University of Mauritius, Réduit, Mauritius
Matthew Schwenger Rowan University, Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering, Department of
Chemical Engineering, Glassboro, NJ, United States
Prem Shankar Department of Laboratory Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New
Delhi, Delhi, India
Gaurav Sharma Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical
Center, Dallas, TX, United States
Guru Prasad Sharma Blood Research Institute, Milwaukee, WI, United States
Manish Kumar Sharma Department of Biotechnology, IP College, Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh,
India
Nirmal Singh Department of Seed Science & Technology, College of Agriculture, CCS Haryana
Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana, India
Pradeep Singh Department of Seed Science & Technology, College of Agriculture, CCS Haryana
Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana, India
Jitendra Singh Department of Laboratory Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New
Delhi, Delhi, India
Evdokia Stefanopoulou Theoretical and Physical Chemistry Institute, National Hellenic Research
Foundation, Athens, Greece; Physics Department, National Technical University of Athens, Athens,
Greece
Jayanti Tokas Department of Biochemistry, College of Basic Sciences & Humanities, CCS
Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana, India
Vedarethinam Vadanasundari Med-X Research Institute, School of Biomedical Engineering,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai, China
Eleni Vlassi Theoretical and Physical Chemistry Institute, National Hellenic Research Foundation,
Athens, Greece
Shikha Yashveer Department of Molecular Biology, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, College
of Basic Sciences & Humanities, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, Haryana, India

xv
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 SECTION 1

Energy production and energy

storage

1
This page intentionally left blank
 CHAPTER 1

Bionanotechnology and Bionanomaterials:

Emerging Applications, Market, and
Commercialization
Jaison Jeevanandam1, Vedarethinam Vadanasundari2, Sharadwata Pan3,
Ahmed Barhoum4, 5, Michael K. Danquah6
1
CQM - Centro de Quı´mica da Madeira, MMRG, Universidade da Madeira, Campus da Penteada,
Funchal, Portugal; 2Med-X Research Institute, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University Shanghai, China; 3TUM School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Freising,
Germany; 4NanoStruc Research Group, Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Helwan
University, Ain Helwan, Cairo, Egypt; 5School of Chemical Sciences, Fraunhofer Project Centre,
Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland; 6Chemical Engineering Department, University of Tennessee,
Chattanooga, TN, United States

1. Introduction
Exhaustive, perpetual research investigations could be noted at present with respect to
nanomaterials (NMs), with widespread, extensive applications stretching from biomedical
engineering to electronics [1]. The augmented mechanical, optical, electrical, electronic,
physicochemical, and thermal characteristics with improved surface features, and the large
surface-to-volume proportion of NMs, relative to conventional resources, have gained
significant attention, toward their employment in numerous solicitations [2e4]. These
NMs are prepared via physical methods, such as ball milling [5], vapor deposition [6,7],
laser ablation [8], and chemical synthesis methodologies, such as sol-gel [9],
coprecipitation [10], polyol [11], hydrothermal [12], and solvothermal methods [13]. Even
though these synthesis approaches are beneficial in fabricating smaller-sized NMs with
distinct morphology, toxicity corresponding to these often surface from the hazardous
chemicals incorporated during their manufacturing [14,15]. Thus, biological synthesis
approaches are utilized for the fabrication of NMs to reduce their toxicity toward humans
and the environment, which has led to the evolution of bionanomaterials (BNMs).
BNMs are classified into two types: naturally occurring BNMs, and NMs synthesized
based on natural products or biomolecules [16]. Natural BNMs are synthesized by
extracting natural materials, such as cellulose, chitin, and chitosan, from plants or living
Bionanotechnology: Emerging Applications of Bionanomaterials. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-823915-5.00009-5
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3
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4 Chapter 1

organisms [17]. On the other hand, the NMs, for instance, metal oxide, metal, polymeric,
and carbon-based NMs, synthesized based on biomolecules and natural products, could
also be perceived as BNMs [16,18,19]. These BNMs are widely utilized in numerous
applications, compared with conventional NMs, due to their less/no toxicity,
biocompatibility, bioavailability, and bioreactivity [20]. This chapter lays an outline of
evolving applications of BNMs, including energy production, conversion, storage, and
electrical and electronic application properties. In addition, the market, regulation, and
commercialization of BNMs are also discussed.

2. Bionanomaterials: emerging applications

Recently, BNMs have shown enough potential with significant advantages toward
numerous applications, which could be credited to their non/less toxic nature,
biocompatibility, bioavailability, and potential improvement in their properties, compared
with conventional NMs [18,19,21,22]. Initially, BNMs are fabricated with potential
biomedical applications. However, later, they are transformed to be serviceable toward
diverse sectors of applications [20]. The environmental amenability of the BNMs has
made them beneficial in energy production, conversion, and storage applications [23].
Recent studies have shown that BNMs possess enhanced electrical and electronic
properties, compared with conventional NMs [24]. In general, BNMs are fabricated and
utilized toward a wide range of biomedical applications, including targeted drug transport
[25], wound or lesion therapy [26], tissue engineering [27], medical implants [16], and
biosensors [28]. The demand for environmentally friendly NMs in electronics [29], and the
elevated toxicity of conventional NMs toward the environment [18,19,30,31], has made
BNMs a potential substitute toward ultramodern applications in electricals and electronics,
such as wearable technology [32]. In addition, these BNMs are widely employed, or under
extensive study, to showcase their extraordinary potential toward energy production [33],
energy conversion [34], energy storage [35], biofuel cells (BFCs) [36], biodiesel [37], and
as catalysts [38]. Furthermore, these novel biogenic NMs are identified to be valuable
toward air filtration [39], wastewater treatment [40], desalination [41], soil treatment
[18,19,42,43], and plant protection [44]. Moreover, the BNMs are highly beneficial in
agriculture, as potential pesticides [45], or as fertilizers [46], as well as in food
preservation [47], and food storage [48]. Equally, BNMs also demonstrate potential
benefits in oil recovery [17], textile [49], automotive [50], paper [51], and wood [52]
industries via various specific applications.

3. Energy production, conversion, and storage

Energy and environment represent two key factors for the long-term survival of human
beings. Power generation via the conversion of natural energy sources to electricity has
been of prime interest, often manifested and realized via the incorporation of diverse,
 Applications, market, and commercialization 5

versatile technologies. Several techniques, involving the exploitation of thermoelectric,

photovoltaic, and piezoelectric materials have been developed toward power generation
[53e56]. However, the advent and upsurge of nanotechnology has greatly advanced a
plethora of alternative energy approaches. NMs play a key role in processing fuels from
fossil fuel resources, such as natural gas, coal, and petroleum. Enlightening the efficiency
of fuel production from raw materials, using nanoparticles (NPs), is more robust than
many of the semiconductors used in traditional approaches [56e58]. NMs with large
surface areas influence the generation of fuels via the reduced collaboration of the atoms
at their surfaces, and their sites of adsorption. They are also supported in photocatalytic
hydrogen and solar electricity generation, as well as the storage of electric energy with
lithium-ion batteries (rechargeable) and solid-state hydrogen [54,55]. Nowadays, an
efficient energy storage system (EES) constitutes a foremost and primary necessity in daily
life. It can be classified by thermal (heat accumulator); mechanical (spring, pumped
storage power plant, and flywheel); chemical (battery, hydrogen, methane, and redox flow
battery); electrical (magnetic superconducting energy storage); and capacitors (electrical
engineering). The storage of electricity is relatively complex in conventional methods.
Nonetheless, advancement in nanotechnology is steadily contributing to an enhanced
energy conversion, storage, and transmission [59]. Batteries are of prime importance,
pertaining to their applications in electronic devices and electric vehicles. NMs are not
only involved in energy production, but they also facilitate energy storage in several
forms. Light-emitting NPs, such as gold or silver NPs, fluorescent NMs, and quantum
dots, are generally exploited to heighten the solar cell capabilities.

3.1 Biofuel cells

BFCs represent a subcategory of fuel cells, where the catalyst at the anode and/or the
cathode possesses a biological origin. BFCs are perhaps the most attractive power sources
for biomedical apparatuses, which are characterized by the generation of electrical energy
from chemical energy via biochemical reactions. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs), a more
renowned form of BFCs, may present a potential remedy for lacking electrical
infrastructure issues, and additionally within the purview of clean and renewable energy
[60,61]. BFCs possess two electrodes (cathode and anode). Both or either of them
represent bioelectrode/s possessing a biological enhancer or catalyst (could be either living
entities or enzymes). Bioreactors are represented by organic substrates, which are directly
converted into electricity using the biological system, facilitated by the involvement or
presence of such catalysts [62,63]. The catalysts could be organic substrates or NMs
produced by biological resources for efficient oxidation [64e66]. Organic substrates, such
as organic acids, carbohydrates, wastewater, and body fluids, are used as fuels through the
catabolic metabolism of the biosystem in the anode compartment. Increased electrons are
then transferred to an electrode, travel to the anode, and eventually migrate via the exterior
6 Chapter 1

load circuit to the cathode, with a reduced electron acceptor. The cathode receives the
diffused protons with oxygen provided by air or water. BFCs are necessitated as
subordinate fuels, acting as an arbitrator for the migration of electrons [67]. This electron
migration procedure, from biocatalysts to the BFC anodes, could be either moderated
(MET or mediated electron transfer) or direct (DET or direct electron transfer). BNMs as
BFCs, including their applications, are shown in Fig. 1.1.

3.2 Bionanomaterial-based biodiesel

Nanotechnology possesses diverse applications. Particularly, enzymes that have been

widely used to hydrolyze biomass for manufacturing biofuels, for instance, biogas,
biodiesel from oils and fats, and ethanol [69]. In this framework, NMs replace the
enzymes leading to efficient catalysis from the medium [70,71]. BFCs may be widely
classified into either enzymatic fuel cells (EFCs) or MFCs, depending on the employed
biocatalyst. NMs have strategic uses in biofuel production, which can be credited to their
distinctive physicochemical features. Several NPs are predominantly used in biofuel
production as catalytic substrates. Most significantly, the selected nanosubstrates
demonstrate a large surface-to-volume proportion, quantum, and immobilized
characteristics and are smaller in size. Using NMs, biofuels (biohydrogen, biogas,
biodiesel, and bioethanol) are receiving more attention from researchers [72e74].
Synthesis of BNMs toward manufacturing of biodiesel is depicted in Fig. 1.2.
NMs, in the form of nanocatalysts, act as perhaps the most popular reaction enhancer or
catalyst in biofuel (especially in biodiesel) production [76e78]. Biodiesel, a fatty acid
methyl ester, is generally prepared by transesterification of oils, which are derived from
feedstocks (plants, animals, and microorganisms). Transesterification involves the presence
of both nanocatalysts and biologicals. While the reaction of nanocatalysts is similar to that
of organic catalysts, it is important to assess the efficacy of the biodiesel manufacturing
methodology. The mixture of feedstocks/raw materials, nanocatalysts, and alcohol is
homogenized via shaker incubation to complete the reaction of transesterification [79,80].
Glycerol is a product, separated from the medium by a fractionating funnel, and purified
by a rotatory evaporator functioning under reduced conditions. The residual mixture and
nanocatalysts are separated by centrifugation. Based on the nature of the nanocatalyst
systems, nanocatalysts have been classified into carbon scaffold-based, inorganic,
magnetic, and mesoporous NMs, including immobilized NMs with biological components
[81e83].

3.3 Metal/metal oxideebased nanocatalysts

Production of biodiesel has progressively involved the exploitation of solid, metal oxide,
or metal-based catalysts (see Fig. 1.3). They play an important role in homogenous
 Applications, market, and commercialization 7

Figure 1.1
Bionanomaterials as biofuel cells and their applications [68]. Reprinted with permission from B.
Sarkar, B. Mridha, S. Pareek, M. Sarkar, L. Thangavelu, A flexible biofuel and bioenergy production system
with transportation disruption under a sustainable supply chain network, J. Clean. Prod. (2021) 128079;
©Elsevier, 2021.
8 Chapter 1

Figure 1.2
Different parts of Terminalia chebula utilized toward the fabrication of copper oxide nanoparticles
as bionanomaterials for biodiesel production [75]. Reprinted with permission from K.V. Yatish, R.M.
Prakash, C. Ningaraju, M. Sakar, R. GeethaBalakrishna, H.S. Lalithamba, Terminalia chebula as a novel
green source for the synthesis of copper oxide nanoparticles and as feedstock for biodiesel production and its
application on diesel engine, Energy (2021) 215119165; ©Elsevier, 2021.

catalysis with certain limitations in the reduction. Developing newly modified metal oxide
nanocatalysts toward high stability, and improved catalytic activity of NMs, including zinc
oxide (ZnO) [86], magnesium oxideecalcium oxide (MgOeCaO) [87], titanium dioxide
(TiO2) [88], iron oxide (Fe3O4) [89], and aluminum trioxide (Al2O3) [90], enhances their
manufacturing rate, thereby facilitating an efficient reaction catalysis process.
Furthermore, mixed metal oxide NMs (alloy) show decent interactions with methanol and
fatty acids. In addition to withstanding high temperatures, the tolerance of these
nanocatalysts has also led to enhanced production [91,92].

3.4 Carbon-based nanocatalysts

Carbon materialebased nanocatalysts, i.e., reduced graphene oxide (rGO), carbon

nanotubes (CNTs), and graphene, possess noteworthy physicochemical features with
 Applications, market, and commercialization 9

Figure 1.3
(A) Iron oxide nanoparticles [84], (B) Glycerolysis treatment for enhanced biodiesel production [85].
10 Chapter 1

different morphologies [93]. Carbon materials provide numerous advantages including

substantial surface area, extraordinary mechanical and thermal robustness, and
functionalization procedures [94]. Graphene oxide (GO) shows a better conversion of fatty
acids, which can be credited to its huge surface area and functional groups. Manufacturing
of biodiesel involves a transesterification reaction (dissipated cooking oil heterogeneous
catalysis) under regulated conditions [95].

3.5 Biobatteries

Recent advancements in technology have revolutionized the development of flexible and

portable electronics in our daily life. Energy supplying devices, such as batteries, are an
integral part among all electronic components. Batteries are anticipated to be simple and
inexpensive, should provide realistic and accessible power, and must be biodegradable
[96,97]. Paper-based microbial batteries have attracted attention, attributing to their
sustainability, cost-effectiveness, energy accessibility, and eco-friendliness. Significant
applications of biobatteries have been reported in diagnostic tools, as single-use and
disposable devices. Biobatteries consist of four different functional components: (1)
reservoir; (2) anode chamber; (3) ion exchange membrane; and (4) solid-state cathode or
air cathode. The exploitation of easily accessible batteries, i.e., MCFs, is garnering
attention, due to their surface area, porosity, bioaffinity, and conductivity [98e100]. An
electroactive bacterium is a specialized subset of microbes that facilitates the anode to
generate power through approachable area from bacterial extracellular electrons transfer
(EET) with or without oxygen and with the anode on the exterior (via an electrical
contact). The generated electrons in MFCs migrate along with the circuit (external),
generate electric power, and travel to the cathode through ion exchange membranes. The
microbes generally act as biocatalysts and introduce preloaded batteries before use.
Several microbes are present in aquatic sources, such as the ocean, river, or pond. Some of
them can generate electric current via the migration of electrons over the cellular
membrane to electrodes on the exterior [101,102].
Bacterial power is generated by dropping liquid bacteria in a local setting. Preloading
techniques to store cultured electroactive bacteria, as self-contained devices, are more
realistic toward battery-type MFC platforms. After the completion of the manufacturing of

=
(A) Reprinted with permission from C. Chingakham, A. David, V. Sajith, Fe3O4 nanoparticles impregnated
eggshell as a novel catalyst for enhanced biodiesel production. Chin. J. Chem. Eng. (2019) 27(11),
2835e2843; ©Elsevier, 2019. (B) Reprinted with permission from A.S. Elgharbawy, W.A. Sadik, O.M.
Sadek, M.A. Kasaby, Glycerolysis treatment to enhance biodiesel production from low-quality feedstocks, Fuel
(2021) 284118970; ©Elsevier, 2021.
 Applications, market, and commercialization 11

the device, the electroactive bacteria are immobilized via lyophilization in the anionic
chamber. Bacterial cells are utilized to seal the device to protect the bacteria from the
outer contaminants. In spite of their applications, biobatteries possess some limitations in
future generations in electronic devices, attributing to their short life span and toxicity.
Biobatteries (around a centimeter in thickness) are widely used in thermoelectric,
electrochemical, photovoltaic energy harvesters, as well as other mechanical applications,
either in small scales or as lab on a chip prototype. Disposability and biodegradability are
necessary features of biobatteries. BNMs toward the synthesis of biobatteries are
illustrated in Fig. 1.4.
Recent advances in MFC-based biobatteries could be understood in the form of (1) flexible
biobatteries, which are stand-alone, flexible energy supplying devices facilitating
sustainable electronic device functions. In this regard, carbon nanofibers (CNFs) and CNTs
are widely used as anode materials of MFCs to boost bacterial electron transfer from the
extracellular space [104e107]. (2) Paper-based biobatteries. Cellulose fiber is a flexible
substrate used in medical care, electronics, and energy. These cellulose fibers are used as
paper substrates in transistors, diodes, memories, and displays. (3) Textile-based
biobatteries. Textiles consist of yarns, which are the building blocks of fibers combined
with human-made components, such as graphene, to synthesize the components of

Figure 1.4
Cyanobacterial biophotovoltaics as bionanomaterials for biobattery fabrication [103]. Reprinted
with permission from L. Liu, S. Choi, Enhanced biophotoelectricity generation in cyanobacterial biophotovoltaics
with intracellularly biosynthesized gold nanoparticles, J. Power Sources (2021) 506230251; ©Elsevier, 2021.
12 Chapter 1

conductive circuits, transistors, sensors, as well as energy harvesting of storage devices

[108,109].

4. Environmental protection and improvements

Environmental pollution is a major global challenge affecting human life, as well as
general flora and fauna. NMs are involved in a wide range of significant, real-life
solicitations concerning the environment, to realize and maintain ecological sustainability.
The phenomena of alleviation or elimination of ecological contaminants have particularly
received considerable research focus [18,19,30,42,43]. The functional characters of NMs,
such as optical, electrical, and mechanical properties, facilitate environmental remediation.

4.1 Air filtration

An ever increasing population and rapid industrialization are the root causes, which are
responsible toward the fast deterioration of the quality of air in urban settlements.
Pollutant-free air remains one of the most essential human assets, which is critical for their
health and well-being. In this context, the evolution of technological interventions toward
contaminant elimination is necessary, to substitute the traditional approaches, including
separation, usage of chemical disinfectants, and adsorption, among others. However, filter
materials were used to decontaminate the air inside (indoor), using nanotechnology,
toward bioaerosol regulation [110,111]. Particularly, the discovery of the contaminant
management technique (photocatalytic, using nano-TiO2 material) is touted to be an
innovative strategy [112]. Filtration of air, which is devoid of microbes, has garnered
significant interest, facilitating original investigations in the domains of public health and
quality of indoor air. Filtration is beneficial, catering to their rapid, inactive capturing of
microbes, and minimizing the operational or feasible particle number, which are blown
away from the filter via the air passage, affected by advanced nanotechnology. Silver (Ag)
NPs have been fabricated via an aerosol procedure, which were reported to be an
advantageous agent toward the filtration of microbes from air and were coated onto the
exterior mask surface. Another application of Ag NPs in daily life using face masks
concerns the enhanced efficacy of masks against microbial entities [113,114]. Filters made
of fibers, i.e., glass fibers, spun-bonded fibers, melt-blown fibers, and nanofibers
(electrospun), have been widely exploited in a plethora of air filtration gadgets. The
efficacy and performance of filtration can be credited to the comparatively large pores,
which are intrinsic to such filters. In filtration, nanofiber membranes are effective in
resolving substrate problems using ultrafine particles with advantageous properties,
including small diameters, controllable pore structures, morphology, decent internal
conductivity, and a large surface area [115,116]. All these NMs would be highly
 Applications, market, and commercialization 13

advantageous toward the alleviation of ecological pollutants via microbial degradation and
air filtration.

4.2 Water treatment

Water is a precious and indispensable commodity toward the sustenance for a regular,
healthy life. It contains organic and inorganic contaminants, including pesticides, dyes,
pharmaceutical drugs, aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, and heavy
metal ions [117,118]. These substances, which are harmful to living organisms, can lead to
dangerous diseases. Removal of such contaminants is urgently required to save human life.
Some of the advanced techniques, in this regard, include precipitation, filtration,
coagulation, sedimentation, adsorption, distillation, and oxidation [119]. These techniques
have been routinely used for the treatment of wastewater. However, there are some
technical drawbacks, which limit the realization of their optimal potential in pollutant
removal. Nowadays, nanotechnology has been extensively implemented to generate potent
solutions toward the effective removal of contaminants from wastewater. The wide-scale
utilization of numerous suitable agents, i.e., nanocatalysts, NP-mediated advanced
filtration, nanosorbents, and biologically active NPs, among other procedures and products,
has significantly resolved and refined the quality of water. NMs act as beneficial agents of
adsorption, which can be credited to their surface volume, particle size, high permeability,
decent electrical characteristics, and the capacity of adsorbance and contaminant binding
[120]. Additionally, they demonstrate catalytic potential and high reactivity. BNM
applications toward wastewater management are shown in Fig. 1.5.
4.2.1 Adsorption
Adsorption methodologies involving NMs are touted to be beneficial toward the
elimination of water pollutants (both inorganic and organic). Adsorption is a surface
principle, which is defined by the attachment of inorganic and organic substrates on the
surface of the adsorbent via adhesion. This adhesion can be attributed to the
physicochemical forces, which are predominantly manifested via the electrostatic and van
der Waals interactions [122]. The hallmark of a beneficial and effective adsorbent could be
associated with its noteworthy features, including resistance to mechanical forces,
biocompatibility, inertness, as well as a sufficiently large adsorption capacity to assure
waste elimination. These characteristics are crucial, as these can assess the material
effectiveness [123,124]. The nanoadsorbents are broadly categorized as (1) carbon-based
nanoadsorbents, which are CNTs, activated carbon, and graphene; (2) metal NPs, which
include gold and silver [125,126]; (3) metal oxideebased nanoadsorbents, which are MgO,
ү-Fe2O3, g-Al2O3, and ZnO [127,128]; and (4) nanocomposites [129].
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Other documents randomly have
different content
found an Apoplectick Balsam more illustrious for Fame, more noble for Virtue,
more worthy for Honour, more ready for Help, and more fragrant for smell, than
this. It chears and comforts all the spirits, natural, vital, and animal, by anointing
the extremities of the Nostrils and the Pulses. It cures Convulsions, Palsies,
Numbness, and other Diseases proceeding of cold.”

The modern physician may think this Balsam “apoplectick” in a

sense never dreamt of by its author; nevertheless he must also sigh
for the faith that believed all those wonders.
Here is another from the same source for “the strengthening of
memory”:

“Balsamum Maemonicus (sic) Sennerti. Balsam for the loss of Memory.

“℞ of the juices of Bawm, Basil, flowers of Sage, Lillies, Primroses, Rosemary,
Lavender, Borrage, Broom, A. ℥ii.; Aqua Vitae, Water-lillies, Roses, Violets, A. ℥i.;
Cubebs, Cardamoms, Grains of Paradise, yellow Sanders, Corpo balsamum,
Orrice, Saffron, Savory, Peony, Tyme, A. ℥ʃ; Storax liquid and Calamita,
Opopanax, Bdellium, Galbanum, Gum of Ivy, Labdanum, A. ʒvi.; Roots of Peony,
long Birthwort, Oils of Turpentine, Spike, Costus, Juniper, Bays, Mastick, Baben,
Lavender, A. ʒv. Pouder them that are to be poudered, then mix and distil in an
Alembick, with a gradual fire; separate the Balsam from the Water.
“Salmon. In this we have put flowers of Sage instead of Mynica or Tamarisk:
otherwise it is verbatim. It is a truly noble Cephalick, and it is reported to cause a
perpetual memory, both Water and Balsom are excellent good against all cold
Diseases: you may anoint the hinder part of the Head, the Nostrils and Ears
therewith. Dose gut. iii. ad vi. This is that Balsam which Charles, Duke of
Burgundy bought of an English Doctor for 10000 Florentines.”

It is to be noted, by the way, the odours do not “strengthen the

memory” as a whole; what they do is to revive special memories.

The use of perfumes like camphor to ward off infection has long
been in vogue. The pompous doctors of Hogarth’s time—just 200
years ago—carried walking-sticks the hollow handle of which formed
a receptacle for camphor, musk, or other pungent substances, which
they held to their noses when visiting patients, to guard against the
smells that to them spelt infection. And the air of the Old Bailey used
to be, and indeed still is, sweetened with herbs strewn on the Bench,
lest the prisoner about to be condemned to death by the rope might
return the compliment and sentence his judge to death by gaol-fever.
To this day, also, herbs are strewn about the Guildhall on state and
ceremonial occasions, an interesting survival.

Demoniac possession was also largely responsible for the nauseous

and disgusting remedies of which early medicine, both among the
folk and among the more educated medical men, was very fond.
Paracelsus was a great believer in such concoctions, one of which,
zebethum occidentale, was his own invention. Fortunately I am not
compelled to divulge the constitution of this remarkable remedy. All
I need say is that it was by no means the “cassia, sandal-buds, and
stripes of labdanum” of Browning’s “Paracelsus”!
Those unspeakable medicaments were (and are still) sometimes
applied externally, sometimes administered internally. One of the
most absurd variants of this class was the holding of divers
foulsmelling mixtures under the patient’s nose for the cure of
hysteria, the idea being that the stench would repel the “mother”
from the patient’s throat, whither it had wandered through sheer
boredom and lack of interest elsewhere.
Nevertheless, out of these most absurd and to us meaningless
methods of treatment modern medicine has here and there selected
remedies which experiment and experience have proved to be of
value; valerian, for example, which is still largely employed for
hysterical conditions, and asafœtida (popularly named “devil’s
dung”).
As a matter of fact, many pungent, strong-smelling substances are
powerful cardiac and muscular stimulants.

Nor must we overlook the carminatives, the pleasantly smelling

dill, aniseed, rue and peppermint, the very names of which bring to
our minds the sweetness of old country places and the efforts, not
always vain, to quiet screaming country babies! Well are they named
the carminatives, acting as they do “like a charm.”
 In the Æneid we are told how once upon a time his divine mother
was revealed to pious Æneas by a heavenly odour. And although
Lucian intimates that the gods themselves enjoyed the smell of
incense, yet, according to Elliot Smith, the real object of incense-
burning was to impart the body-odour of the god to his worshippers.
Something of the kind, whatever the primary motive may have been,
must have been needed, one would imagine, to drown the unpleasant
smells from the abattoirs in the temples where the sacrificial animals
were slaughtered.
The wrath of the Lord God of the Hebrews after the Flood, it will
be remembered, was appeased when he smelled the sweet savour of
the burnt offerings of Noah on his emergence from the Ark. The
sacrifice was, of course, the meal of the god, the flesh of bullocks,
rams, doves, and what not, being spiritualised by the flames and so
transformed into food a spirit could absorb. The Greek gods, it is
true, refreshed themselves with such ethereal delicacies as nectar
and ambrosia, but they were by no means indifferent to the square
meal of roast beef so punctiliously provided for them by human
purveyors. Homer is always careful to mention that, as often as a
feast was toward, neither the gods nor the bards were forgotten, the
former being fed before and the latter after the heroes themselves
had been satisfied.
When, following the Persian division of the unseen world of spirits
into good and bad, the idea of an evil-minded and consistently
hostile god became popular, his odour was naturally enough the
opposite of that of the kindly gods. And as in time he came to assume
some of the attributes of the Roman di inferni, he, like the dragons of
an even greater antiquity, sported the sulphury odour of his
underground dwelling.
The Northern nations of ancient Europe, Grimm tells us, believed
that hell was a place of burning pitch, whence arose an intolerable
stench. Our English word “smell” is obviously related to a German
dialect word for hell—smela—which in turn is itself akin to the
Bohemian smola, resin or pitch.
The Christian “hell” was thus the lineal descendant of the
subterranean “Hades” of the pagans, and what its stench was like
may be gathered from that of the noxious fumes that rise out of clefts
in volcanic rocks, such fumes, we may suppose, as in earlier days
threw the Oracle at Delphi into her prophetic trances. (Some
authorities, however, say that it was the smoke of burning bay-leaves
that the Oracle inhaled.)
The offensive odour of hell adheres to all the devils right down to
modern times. In the Middle Ages you could always tell the Evil One
by his sulphurous stink, but, unfortunately for the tempted, it was
not usually observed until after his departure.
But evil odours not only attended the devil himself: they were also
generated by the sins. For St. Joseph of Copertino, “seeing beneath
the envelope of the body,” was able to recognise the sins of the flesh
by their odour. And St. Paconi, so it was said, could even smell out
heretics in his day, presumably in the same way as witches are now
discovered in Africa.
Moreover, as the devil and his minions are attended with a vile
smell, the odour of their infernal home, so naturally they detest what
we call sweet and aromatic perfumes and are repelled by them, as the
following tale from Sinistrari of Ameno shows. I give it verbatim as it
appears in Sax Rohmer’s “Romance of Sorcery”:

“In a certain monastery of holy nuns there lived as a boarder a young maiden of
noble birth who was tempted by an Incubus, that appeared to her by day and by
night, and with the most earnest entreaties, the manners of a most passionate
lover, incessantly incited her to sin; but she, supported by the grace of God and the
frequent use of the Sacraments, stoutly resisted the temptation. But all her
devotions, fasts, and vows notwithstanding, despite the exorcisms, the blessings,
the injunctions showered by exorcists on the Incubus that he should desist from
molesting her, in spite of the crowd of relics and other holy objects collected in the
maiden’s room, of the lighted candles kept burning there all night, the Incubus
none the less persisted in appearing to her as usual in the shape of a very
handsome young man.
“At last among other learned men whose advice had been taken on the subject
was a very erudite Theologian, who, observing that the maiden was of a thoroughly
phlegmatic temperament, surmised that the Incubus was an aqueous demon (there
are in fact, as is testified by Guaccius, igneous, aerial, phlegmatic, earthly,
subterranean demons, who avoid the light of day) and prescribed an uninterrupted
fumigation of the room.
“A new vessel, made of glass like earth, was accordingly brought in, and filled
with sweet cane, cubeb seed, roots of both aristolochies, great and small
cardamom, ginger, long-pepper, caryophylleae, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmegs,
calamite, storax, benzoin, aloes wood and roots, one ounce of triapandalis, and
three pounds of half brandy and water; the vessel was then set on hot ashes in
order to distil the fumigating vapour, and the cell was kept closed.
“As soon as the fumigation was done, the Incubus came, but never dared enter
the cell; only, if the maiden left it for a walk in the garden or the cloister, he
appeared to her, though invisible to others, and, throwing his arms around her
neck, stole or rather snatched kisses from her, to her intense disgust.
“At last, after a new consultation, the Theologian prescribed that she should
carry about her person pills made of the most exquisite perfumes, such as musk,
amber, chive, Peruvian balsam, etc. Thus provided, she went for a walk in the
garden, where the Incubus suddenly appeared to her with a threatening face, and
in a rage. He did not approach her, however, but, after biting his finger as if
meditating revenge, disappeared, and was nevermore seen by her.”

On the other hand, the odour of sanctity in mediæval times was a

much more real perfume than that in which the Jackdaw of Reims
died. It does not seem, so far as I can make out from my reading, that
the sweet smell of the Saints was ever remarked in the early centuries
of the Christian era. The odour diffused around his pillar by St.
Simeon Stylites, for example, was by no means pleasant. But by A.D.
1000 the sweetness of the Saints’ persons was beginning to pervade
the religious atmosphere. Writing about that time, Odericus Vitalis
tells us that “from the sepulchre of St. Andrew” (at Patras, Asia
Minor) “manna like flour and oil of an exquisite odour flow, which
indicate to the inhabitants of that country” what the crops will be like
that year. And the example thus set by this apostle is followed by all
other saintly personages for many centuries.
In England, we read that when the Blessed Martyr Alban’s burial
place on the hill above Verulamium was opened, in obedience to a
sign from heaven in the shape of a flash of lightning, the good people
were enraptured by the delicious fragrance of the Saint’s remains,
and the same characteristic attended those of the later martyr
Thomas à Becket.
St. Thomas à Kempis is credited with the statement that the
chamber of the blessed Leduine was so charmingly odorous that
people who were privileged to enter it were delighted, and wishing to
enjoy her perfume to the full, were wont to approach their faces close
to the bosom of the Saint, “who seemed to have become a casket in
which the Lord had deposited His most precious perfumes.” After the
death of St. Theresa a salt-cellar which had been placed in her bed
preserved for a long time a most delicious odour. And so on
indefinitely, some of the stories being, as might be expected, a little
too plain-spoken and artless for modern readers.

It is difficult to account for the pleasant odour of Saints whose

pride it was to live without change of raiment, to harbour parasites,
and to abstain from washing. Nevertheless that certain persons
exhale a naturally pleasant aroma from their bodies is true.
Alexander the Great is noted by Plutarch as having so sweet an odour
that his tunics were soaked with aromatic perfume, and taking a
flying leap through the pages of history, we come to Walt Whitman,
who had the same characteristic. Indeed, a piny aromatic odour, of
considerable strength, is occasionally noticeable in certain people,
and I can myself testify that it becomes stronger on the approach of
their death.
We are not often told when historical heroes were unpleasant in
this respect, but in the case of Louis XIV. we have the authoritative
evidence of Madame Montespan, who after their “divorce, when
having a public set-to with her sun-god in the glittering salles of
Versailles, discomfited that little, red-heeled, bewigged, and
pompous mannikin with the following broadside:
“With all my imperfections, at least I do not smell as badly as you
do!”
His ancestor, “Lewis the Eleventh,” says Burton in “The Anatomy
of Melancholy,” “had a conceit everything did stink about him. All
the odoriferous perfumes they could get would not ease him, but still
he smelled a filthy stink.”
A modern rhinologist would suspect this monarch of having been
afflicted with maxillary antrum suppuration. It will be noted,
however, that there is no record that the odour he himself perceived
was perceptible to others. The fœtor, as we say, was subjective, not
objective, in which respect it differed from that of another historical
personage, Benjamin Disraeli to wit, who was the subject probably of
the disease known as ozæna. (See later.)
 CHAPTER VI
THE ULTIMATE

In a former chapter we dwelt upon the curious fact that memories

aroused by olfactory stimuli are independent of the will. Now there is
yet another way in which smell ignores the head of the cerebral
hierarchy.
Although on occasion confining its operations to the
subconsciousness, and exercising, so to speak, only a backstairs
influence upon the mind, olfaction much more frequently insists
upon recognition, breaking in upon our privacy, like a disreputable
acquaintance, at most inopportune moments.
If you do not wish to see you can look the other way. When you
would rather not hear you can be inattentive. A proffered handshake
you can ignore. A dish you dislike you may decline. But you can’t
help smelling—no, not even if you turn up your nose.
Olfaction is thus the great leveller among the senses, equality
having here a reality but rarely found elsewhere. For odour makes its
way into the nose of king and cadger, duke and drayman, lady and
lout, indifferently. Nay, by an ironical law of olfaction the fœtors are
more powerful than the fragrances, and vervain the feeble turns tail
before the onslaught of scatol (as well it might, indeed!), in which
case there is nothing to be done but to bear it (without the grin
mostly); or to follow the wise example of vervain; or to remove the
offence, as we have done in England these latter days, only to render
ourselves, as I have carefully pointed out in Chapter I., all the more
sensitive to it when it does come.
To many of us it comes on the dog.
This animal has a regrettable fondness for wallowing, diligently
and with forethought, in the Abominable, until his coat is thoroughly
well impregnated. For no other reason, I do verily believe, than, as he
thinks, to give his human friends for once some of the olfactory
pleasure he himself enjoys. A treat he thinks it, without any doubt.
Just look at the smirk of pride and satisfaction on his face as he trots
in and resumes his place on the drawing-room hearthrug and the
amazement with which he receives the sudden toe of your boot!
And yet he rolls himself over on the odoriferous for the same
reason that a fashionable lady has orris-root put in her bath; namely,
for the pleasure and gratification of society at large. There are who
say that my lady’s perfume seems as vile to her Pekinese as his then
does to her! If so, he is the more tolerant animal of the two.
Anyhow, he certainly has the knack of thrusting the
Unmentionable upon the attention of the most fastidious, and smell
is no longer speechless.

Now, if we are to treat fully of things olfactory, we must at least

take cognisance of the Unmentionable. But to extend our notice
would take us across the garden to the muckrake and the dunghill.
And such nearer investigation and description I must decline, even
although in these days of outspokenness I may have to apologise for
Victorian squeamishness. To attain merit as a writer the advice now
given you is: Be frank! And if you disgust, why, so much the better!
That may be so. I do not question the value of the advice, not for a
moment. All I say is that I prefer not to take it. And if somebody else
desires this particular laurel-crown, this crown of tainted laurel, he
shall wear it without arousing any envy upon my part, albeit, as I
know full well, this is a branch of the subject which illuminates many
obscurities and seeming eccentricities in human conduct. I know all
about that, but, as Herodotus so often says, I am not going to tell all I
know, although, I fear, an allusion or two may be necessary.
We may take it as on the whole true that a repulsive odour is a
dangerous odour. Not invariably, however. Otherwise grouse in their
season would not be esteemed a dainty and Gorgonzola would
everywhere be buried. Nevertheless in these high realms palatability
is limited to quite a narrow streak. There is a level beyond which the
boldest gastronomic adventurer dare not climb.
 It is remarkable that the liking for half-decomposed food, although
an acquired taste, is found everywhere in the world, among savage
and civilised, rich and poor, high and low—but not among young and
old. For young people do not usually approve of such recherché
flavours. It would be a mistake, however, to argue from that fact that
these savoury meats act as fillips to a sense jaded with age, because it
is generally agreed that neither smell nor taste declines in acuteness
as we grow old. On the contrary, they become more instructed, more
particular, more delicate. Appetite declines if you like, but taste and
smell abide increasingly unto the end.
Nevertheless we can only look upon this particular liking as
acquired, since the high relish of one country but fills its neighbours
with disgust.
It is worthy of remark, perhaps, that the last whiff, the final
sublimated breath of ripe Gorgonzola as it passes over, is a faint
suggestion of ammonia. Curiously enough, this always fills my
imagination with the sack of cities and the end of all things in smoke
and thunder. It may be because the penultimate phase of life itself is
ammonia. Fire, slaughter, and much more besides come quite
promptly to this gas for the City of Destruction, what there is left of
the remainder in dust and ashes being but a handful for the wind.

To the keen-sensed medical man certain morbid states can be

recognised by their exhalations. I have even heard of an enthusiast
on the subject who alluded to them as “both visible and tangible”;
but that, I think, must be exceptional.
Physicians of the last generation used to speak of typhus fever as
having a close, mawkish odour, and the smell of smallpox is horrible.
But these, as well as the appalling stench of the hospitals in olden
days, are among the smells which have, for the most part, fled our
country.
There are others, however, less powerful and repugnant, which are
still with us, and which we recognise as among the prominent
characteristics of certain maladies, the acid smell of acute
rheumatism for one, and I have sometimes thought I could detect a
characteristic odour also in acute nephritis, a smell resembling that
of chaff. The odour of a big hæmorrhage is unmistakable and, to
obstetricians particularly, ominous.
Then there is the smell of mice which attends upon the skin
disease known as favus.
The breath of a chronic drunkard is familiar enough to everybody,
and the more delicate aroma in the circumambient atmosphere of
the careful tippler, ethereal and by no means unpleasant, will often
reveal to the physician the hidden cause of obscure symptoms. It is
particularly valuable when your patient is, as so many of these secret
drinkers are, a woman, it may be a woman of good social standing.
A disease-odour of great value and significance is the sweet-
smelling breath caused by acetone poisoning in the later stages of
diabetes.
A sweet smell is also said by Bacon to attend plague:

“The plague is many times taken without a manifest sense, as hath been said.
And they report that, where it is found, it hath the scent of a smell of a mellow
apple; and (as some say) of May-flowers; and it is also received that smells of
flowers that are mellow and luscious are ill for the plague, as white lilies, cowslips
and hyacynth.” (Quoted by Creighton, “A History of British Epidemics,” p. 685,
f.n.)

Death sometimes heralds his approach by means of an odour, said

in some parts of the country to bring ravens about the house, which
may well be true, as it is apparently a summons of the same nature
that calls the Indian vulture in flocks from apparently untenanted
skies. Birds in general, however, seem to belong to the microsmatic
group of animals, relying chiefly upon their vision, which is often
highly perfected, particularly for distance.

Much has been made, too much perhaps, of the part played by
olfaction in the sex-life, and its undoubted prominence in the
coupling of four-footed animals is pointed to as an indication of its
potency in mankind also. But the reasoning is fallacious. Olfactory
influences predominate in these animals simply because olfaction is
their principal sense.
 Among birds, now, courtship and marriage are conducted without
any apparent aid from olfaction, and in no group of beings, not even
in mankind, is the poetic side of courtship, both before and after
marriage, so highly developed and so beautifully displayed. In their
love-making the birds appeal to each other through the ear in their
songs, and through the eye in the nuptial splendours of the male,
splendours which he parades with glorious pomp before what often
seems to be, indeed, but a lackadaisical and indifferent spouse.
As we have already seen, this independence of olfactory stimuli is,
so far as obvious indications go, also the case with human lovers.
True, we have numerous references by poets to the sweetness of their
ladies’ breath, only one, as far as I know, being blunt enough to say:
“And in some perfumes there is more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.”

But the sum and substance of Havelock Ellis’s exhaustive inquiry on

this point is undoubtedly this, that if a lover loves the aroma of his
lady, that is because of his love, not because of her inherent
sweetness. In other words, the attraction, subtle though it be, at least
in the early or romantic stage, is seldom or never obviously olfactory.
It is the suggestion of closer intimacy that constitutes the attraction
of her nearer environment, and this suggestion is the offspring of the
lover’s imagination.
As to the influence of her personal emanation in the second, the
realistic, stage, there also, it would seem, its power is subsidiary,
certainly to that of touch, although more active than that of sight and
hearing, seeing that the holy of holies is only unveiled in darkness
and in silence.
As for our opinion in everyday life, I think most people will
subscribe to the old adage “Mulier bene olet dum nihil olet.”
 CHAPTER VII
SMELL AND THE PERSONALITY

Whatever of myth there may be in the quaint stories we related in

Chapter V., there is no doubt about this, that there is great variety
among different individuals in respect to their personal atmosphere.
I mean the natural atmosphere of the person, of course, not the
artificial airs that surround and envelop the beperfumed modern
lady.
There is no need to enlarge upon this branch of our subject. Those
who are curious about it may apply themselves to Havelock Ellis for
more detailed information. What I am concerned with here is
something much less commonplace and obvious, the question,
namely, whether we disseminate and receive, each of us, anything
less material than the odours we are conscious of.
In addition to his other olfactory accomplishments, our friend the
dog seems to be able to distinguish by smell when a strange dog is to
be cultivated as a friend or wrangled with as a foe, and nothing is
more amusing to watch than the careful and even suspicious
olfactory investigation two dogs meeting for the first time make of
each other’s odours, during which exchange of credentials a state of
armed neutrality exists, to pass, apparently as a result of some
mysterious olfactory decision, either into frank, open, and
unchangeable hostility, or into friendship equally frank, open, and
unchangeable.
But what it is that makes one dog smell to another of enmity or of
friendship is as mysterious as—the mutual attraction or repulsion
felt for each other by two human beings, shall we say? For, of course,
this suspense of judgment on encountering a new-comer is a human
no less than a canine trait. There were physiognomists before
Lavater, since we are naturally influenced by what our senses, and
especially our eyes and our ears, tell us about a person we are
meeting for the first time. We like the look of the man, his
expression, his smile, the character of his movements, bodily as well
as facial; we find the intonation of his voice, his accent, his laugh,
agreeable. Or we don’t. And our decision is curiously independent of
his moral character, even after we have got to know that side of him.
Now, this act of judgment seems to us to be quite independent of any
olfactory evidence. We rely upon our predominant senses just as the
dog relies upon his. Yet I sometimes catch myself wondering whether
olfaction, olfaction rarefied and refined beyond imagining, does not
without our knowledge play some part in our estimate of the pros
and cons in character.
What is conveyed to us by the “personality” of a man? Here we
have apparently a complex of sense-impressions, for the most part
vague, which we are seldom able to analyse, even to ourselves. Still
less can we put it into words capable of conveying our impression to
other people. “There is something about him that I like” is about the
sum-total of our attempts at description.
And if this be true as between man and man, it is even more often
remarked as between man and woman. Meredith it is, I think, who
says that the surest way to a woman’s heart is through her eye.
Fortunately for most of us, his dictum is open to question. Otherwise
the human race would soon come to an end. Now, although, unlike
Meredith, I cannot claim the rank of a high-priest in the temple of
Venus, yet so far as I may dare to express an opinion upon a matter
so recondite, not to say mysterious, I should rather be inclined to say
that the surest route is by way of her ear, and I am fortified in my
belief by an authority as erudite in these matters as Meredith
himself, Shakespeare to wit:
“That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.”

John Wilkes, they say, to all appearance a “most uninteresting-

looking man,” asked for only half an hour of a start to beat the
handsomest gentleman in England at the game of games. Women
forgot what he was like as soon as he began to talk.
Who has not seen women turning sidelong glances, with that
surreptitious intentness we all know so well, towards some very
ordinary man in whose voice they, but not we, detect the indefinable
something that has the power of luring these shy creatures from their
inaccessible retreats? What man has not seen this play and puzzled
over it? The quality—is it perhaps something caressing, or something
brutal and ultra-masculine, or both at once? Who knows what it is
that their intuition perceives?
So we ask, we less favoured mortals, as we turn and look at him
also, hard and long, only to give it up with a shrug!

When I am one of a crowd under the spell of an orator—a rare

bird, by the way, in England—I feel his power less in what he says
than in how he says it. Gladstone, for example, swayed his audience
by the fervour of his personality, not by any beauty of word or
thought in his rhetoric. How meaningless his speeches seem to us
nowadays as we vainly try to read them, how involved, discursive,
ambiguous, turgid. How dull! And yet we know that these same
involved, discursive, ambiguous, turgid and dull speeches could and
did rouse hard-bitten Scotsmen to a wildness of enthusiasm that
seems to us incredible.

Thus the personality is something that travels on the wings of

sound. But is that all? Is there not something more, something
imperceptible which yet exercises a secret power over our emotions
and passions? Is there an olfactory aura?

“Why does the elevation of the Host in a Roman Catholic church bring such an
assurance of peace to the congregation?” writes a friend of mine. “This remarkable
sensation I have myself frequently experienced and wondered at. Yet I am, as you
know, a Scots Presbyterian, and do not credit for a single moment the miraculous
change of bread and wine. And yet to this gracious and comforting influence I have
been subject on more than one occasion. It is for all the world as if the constant
pin-pricks of our normal life were suspended for a moment or two.
“It is present only during service, and then only at the culmination of the rite.
“As I do not believe in the miracle, the influence must come to me from without,
not from within myself. Indeed, I have actually come to the conclusion that it is
borne in upon me not by the church atmosphere with its incense, nor by the
solemn intonation of the priest, nor by the whisper of the muted organ, nor yet by
the distant murmur of the choir, but—by the congregation itself!
 “It is from the kneeling worshippers that the mysterious influence emanates,
invisibly, inaudibly, intangibly, to suffuse with the peace of some other world the
spirit even of an unbeliever....”

Is it possible that influences such as these may enter by the

olfactory door?
This perhaps may seem to be rather a fanciful suggestion for a
scientifically trained writer to offer. But it is not wholly fanciful, since
it has some support at least from theory (whatever that may be
worth), and even from some considerations based upon solid fact.
As to theory, we have already seen how Fabre arrived at the
conclusion that the olfactory sense of certain insects is capable of
receiving stimuli to which we are insensitive, stimuli which he
surmised to be of the nature of an ethereal vibration. Consider too
the following facts.
It is well known that there are people who have an instinctive
dislike of cats. The late Lord Roberts was one, and it is said of him
that he was aware of the presence of his bête noire before he caught
sight of it. How was he made aware?
The same instinctive aversion is felt by some people towards
spiders. I myself know of one, a young girl, who cannot sleep if her
bedroom contains one of these creatures. She, like Lord Roberts feels
without knowing how when a spider is near her.
Here also is a letter to a newspaper from a correspondent telling
the same tale:

“Sir,

“I notice with interest that the official photographer who is to accompany Sir
Ernest Shackleton’s Quest expedition has an intense dislike of spiders. Can any of
your readers explain this uncanny horror, which I believe is shared by a large
number of people?
“I myself loathe and fear spiders—so much so that I have been known on more
than one occasion to go into a darkened room and to declare the presence of one of
these creatures, my pet abomination being subsequently discovered....
“F. E.”
 What sense-organ—because there must be one—enables F. E. and
others like him (or her) to detect the presence of a small creepy-
crawly?
We turn now to a series of medical cases which may throw some
light upon this peculiarity.
There are people who suffer from asthma when they go near
horses. To enter a stable or to sit behind a horse is to them a certain
means of bringing on an attack.
This susceptibility and the peculiar form taken by the reaction
remind us of hay fever. In sufferers from this troublesome complaint
the pollen of certain plants has an irritating effect upon the mucous
surfaces of the eyes, nose, and bronchial tubes. So in like manner
recent investigation has shown that there is in the blood of the horse
a proteid substance which acts as an irritant poison to those
susceptible people. Their asthma, therefore, is merely a
manifestation of the irritation produced by the poisonous body or its
emanation when it is borne to them through the air. Similarly we are
justified in arguing that cats and spiders may throw off an effluvium
which is irritating to those susceptible to it.
But it is to be noted that the antipathy in these last instances
manifests itself, not in a tissue change, but in a feeling of the mind,
an emotion. Nay more, these people do not smell the cat or the
spider, except in the way that James I. “smelled” gunpowder.
Nevertheless, the irritant must travel through the air as an odour
does, and it probably enters the organism by the mucous membrane
of the nose.
But does it act upon the olfactory cells? Here we encounter, I must
confess, a serious obstacle to an acceptance of this theory.
The interior of the nose is sensitive not only to odours, but also to
certain chemical irritants. Any one who has peeled a raw onion or
has taken a good sniff at a bottle of strong smelling-salts knows what
I mean. Now, the chemical irritant, in the latter case ammonia gas,
affects not the olfactory nerve, but certain naked nerve fibrils in the
mucous membrane belonging to what is known as the fifth cranial
nerve, a nerve of simple sensation.[2] And the simultaneous irritation
of the eyelids, and in the case of the pollen and horse effluvia the
bronchial tubes, shows that these resemble in their action the simple
chemical irritants, and not the odours.
2. The difference between those two sensations becomes clearly evident when
an anosmic person is peeling an onion. The usual irritation of the eyes and nose is
felt and manifested, but the patient is unaware of any odour.
It must be remembered, however, that, as we have said, the cat
and the spider effluvia induce an emotional effect simply, without
local irritation. And emotional change not only follows, it may also
precede, the perception of an odour.
The following anecdote of Goethe, for example, shows how smell
may affect the personality before it is recognised as an odour by the
consciousness:

“An air that was beneficial to Schiller acted on me like poison,” Goethe said to
Eckermann. “I called on him one day, and as I did not find him at home, I seated
myself at his writing-table to note down various matters. I had not been seated
long before I felt a strange indisposition steal over me, which gradually increased,
until at last I nearly fainted. At first I did not know to what cause I should ascribe
this wretched, and to me unusual, state, until I discovered that a dreadful odour
issued from a drawer near me. When I opened it I found, to my astonishment, that
it was full of rotten apples. I immediately went to the window, and inhaled the
fresh air, by which I was instantly restored. Meanwhile his wife came in, and told
me that the drawer was always filled with rotten apples, because the scent was
beneficial to Schiller, and he could not live without it.”

I wish to emphasise, for the sake of my argument, that Goethe

underwent a profound constitutional disturbance, with its attendant
discomfort, before he realised that its cause was an odour.
If, then, an odour can induce such emotional changes without
attracting attention to itself, the suggestion is not, after all, so very
far-fetched that an emanation proceeding from the worshippers at
the moment of the elevation of the Host in a Roman Catholic church
may be transmitted to the bystanders through the olfactory door to
induce in them an emotion similar to that felt by the initiated.
It may be objected that Goethe’s experience and that of my friend
are not alike, since Goethe plainly, though tardily, became aware of a
real odour. It must be remembered, however, that Goethe was a
scientist and naturally gifted, besides, with an unusual power of
introspective analysis. He found the cause of his disturbance because
he sought for it.
Moreover, we learn from Havelock Ellis that during religious
excitement a real (and pleasant) odour is sometimes perceptible in
the atmosphere around the faithful.
May it not also be the same kind of influence, transmitted in the
same way, that dominates the mind, in company with impressions
received by sight and hearing, when we are in the vicinity of other
people?

Our study of smells has brought us, to be sure, into a strange

region of psychology, for it is possible that we have here one
explanation of the mysteries of crowd-psychology, of those
unreasonable waves of passion that sometimes sweep through
masses of people and lead to all manner of strange happenings, like
crusades and holy wars; autos-da-fé; witch-burnings; lynch-
murders; State-prohibition; spiritualistic manifestations; and other
miracles.

(The somewhat uncanny “sense” we have when some one else is

present in what we suppose to be an empty room may be olfactory in
origin, but it has generally seemed to me that it is due rather to an
alteration in the echo of the room, a change in its normal sound-
picture. If the room is a strange one to us, I do not think we so
readily become suspicious of the presence of an unseen and
unexpected visitor.)
 CHAPTER VIII
THEORIES OF OLFACTION
(The Pièce de Résistance)

The anatomical structure of the olfactory end-organ in the nose is,

as we saw in Chapter II., simple.
Contrast it with the eye. Here we have what is obviously an optical
instrument, with lens, iris diaphragm, dark walls, and sensitive plate
complete—a photographic camera, in a word.
Contrast it also with the ear, which is an acoustic apparatus
reminding us in its detail of a recording gramophone leading to a
closed box in which are what look like a series of resonators, like the
wires of a piano.
In the antechamber of each of those organs the physical vibrations
to which they respond undergo considerable modification before
they reach the sensory cells.
In the antechamber of the olfactory organ, on the other hand, the
amount of modification necessary is evidently but slight, as the
olfactory region of the nasal chamber is merely a narrow, open
passage. As far as we know, all that takes place is that the incoming
stimulus, the odorous molecule, is warmed and received by the nasal
mucus.
Thus the very complexity of the structure both of the eye and of the
ear helps us to comprehend their function.
But what can we deduce from a flat surface in which all we can see
is a collection of cells with minute protoplasmic hairs projecting from
their distal ends? Obviously, little or nothing. We are, in fact,
confounded by simplicity. It may be that we are here dealing with
one of the essential properties of all living matter, little, if at all,
altered from its primitive condition.
To the physiologist, then, olfaction is the most mysterious of all the
senses. It still retains its secrets, and therein lies the fascination of its
study.
Of late years, the exploration of this dark region of physiology has
been, and is still being, vigorously pushed, and we shall now proceed
to give what, however, can only be a brief and superficial account of
the progress made and of the opinions held. Even so we shall be
compelled to make an incursion into the high and dry realms of
modern chemical and physical theory. That may not be good hearing,
but what is still worse is that almost every single point we shall be
discussing is a matter of controversy.
Let us commence with a few of the details, mostly unimportant,
upon which there is general agreement.
Consider, first of all, the variety, the almost infinite variety, of
odours. We have, for example, all the odours of the world of Nature,
the emanations of inorganic matter, of the earth itself, its soil and its
minerals; to these we must add the multitudinous perfumes of the
vegetable kingdom, of barks, roots, leaves, flowers and fruits,
including those of growing herbaceous plants, which differ so widely
from one another that it is said of Rousseau, whose myopia was
compensated for by an unusually acute sense of smell, and who was,
moreover, no mean botanist, that he could have classified the plants
according to their smell had there been a sufficiency of olfactory
terms for the purpose; then we have the thousand effluvia, some
pleasant and others not so pleasant, of living animals, including the
various races of mankind; next come the—mostly repulsive—odours
of decaying vegetable and putrefying animal matter; and finally the
products of man’s own proud ingenuity and skill, such as the
artificial perfumes and flavours on the one hand and on the other
coal-gas, acetylene, carbon disulphide, and the like.

Parker notes it as worthy of remark that man has created, both

accidentally and intentionally, many new odours—smells, that is to
say, which have no fellow in the world of Nature—and he emphasises
the fact that the nose is nevertheless capable of appreciating such
novel sensations.
In this connection we may mention that the art of modern
perfumery can imitate closely many of the natural perfumes, and
more particularly the natural flavours, by mixing together essences,
or components, which in no way resemble the final product.
Thus the flavour of peaches can be compounded artificially of
aldehyde, acetate, formate, butyrate, valerianate, œnanthylate, and
sebate of ethyl, and salicylate of methyl, with glycerine, glycerine
being added to the fruit essences, as it is to wines, in order to restrain
the evaporation of the volatile bodies. (The fruit essences are used
only in the making of flavours. They cannot be employed as
perfumes, as they are too irritating to the nose.)
The union of components to form a product different from any one
of them is found also in vision. When the colours of the spectrum, for
example, are commingled, the resultant white light is devoid of any
colour.
Thus the potential responsiveness of the olfactory organ seems to
be practically inexhaustible. So far, at all events, it has not yet
reached the limits of its capacity.
The number and variety of recognised smells being so great, then,
one can readily understand how difficult it is to construct a
classification of odours. Many attempts have, in fact, been made, but,
depending as they do more or less upon subjective sensation, no two
classifiers give us the same classification. Indeed, a division of all
smells into “nice,” “neutral,” and “nasty” would be about as good as
many much more ambitious efforts.
Zwaardemaker’s is the classification most usually followed at
present, and as it is to him we owe most of our knowledge of
scientific olfaction, we shall detail it here:
(1) Ethereal or fruity odours; (2) aromatic, including as sub-classes
camphrous, herbaceous, anisic and thymic, citronous, and the bitter
almond group; (3) balsamic, with sub-groups floral, liliaceous, and
vanillar; (4) ambrosial or muscous; (5) garlicky (including garlic),
oniony, fishy, and the bromine type of odour; (6) empyreumatic
(guaiacol); (7) caprylic (valerianic acid); (8) disgusting; and (9)
nauseating.
 The subjective character of these classes is obvious, especially in
the last two groups, but, apart from that objection, most people will
be inclined to protest when they learn that chloroform and iodoform
are put into the first, the ethereal or fruity, group, while it is
suggested, though to be sure with a query, that coffee, bread, and
burnt sugar may belong to the “repulsive” (pyridine) group!
The fact is that Zwaardemaker’s classification is based upon a
chemical foundation, that is to say, upon properties which, as we
shall see later on, do not necessarily correspond with the odours as
we smell them. That, no doubt, explains his inclusion of iodoform
among the “fruity” odours.—Iodoform fruity!—Shades of George
Saintsbury and his “Cellar Book”!
A shorter classification is that of Heyninx, who, aiming at
objectivity, bases his arrangement, to some extent at all events, upon
the spectrum analysis of odorous molecules in the atmospheric
medium, of which more anon. His list is: acrid, rotten, fœtid,
burning, spicy, vanillar or ethereal, and garlicky. But here, also, the
coupling of vanillar with ethereal odours seems a little inappropriate.
We stand, perhaps, on rather firmer ground when we turn to the
manufacturer’s classification, founded as it is frankly upon subjective
sensation, and therefore devoid of any surprises to the logical faculty.
Here is Rimmel’s arrangement: rose, jasmine, orange, tuberose,
violet, balsam, spice, clove, camphor, sandal-wood, lemon, lavender,
mint, anise, almond, musk, ambergris, fruit (pear).
It may be objected, perhaps, that this is a catalogue merely, not a
scientific classification. That is quite true. But what is also true is that
the others we have quoted are little, if any, better. The fact is that we
do not yet possess the knowledge necessary to enable us to arrange
odours in classes.
The manufacturers, of course, concern themselves with agreeable
and attractive odours only. To the great and growing company of the
stinks they pay no attention whatever. For that reason their
contribution to our knowledge is necessarily but partial and limited.
In their own proper domain, however, they can point to several
great successes. They recognise, for practical purposes, about eighty
primitive scents. Many natural (to say nothing of many unnatural)
perfumes can now be prepared artificially, and some so prepared are
said to be even more powerful than the natural productions.
Artificial musk, for example, is one thousand times stronger than
natural musk, Parker tells us. Deite, on the other hand, says that the
smell of artificial musk is not equal to that of the natural! Indeed,
according to this authority, although synthetic perfumes play an
important part in the concocting of scents, there are only a few of
them which can be used instead of the natural product. What
happens is that the artificial and the natural are generally used in
combination. Thus the “mignonette” of the shops is prepared by
passing geraniol, an artificial odorivector made from citronella oil,
over the natural mignonette flowers, the resulting product being an
essence smelling strongly of mignonette, and not at all of geraniol.
One or two, as we said, are purely artificial imitations; coumarin,
for example, the “new-mown hay” of sentimental memory, which
used to be obtained from the tonka bean, is now entirely made up by
the synthetic chemist. But for all the more subtle essences we have
still to rely upon Nature’s laboratory. The manufacturer steps in and
distils the precious essential oil certainly, but it is from flowers that
he obtains it. Attar of roses, for instance, contains, in addition to
natural geraniol, a number of other ingredients which have so far
escaped analysis, a hundred thousand roses supplying only an ounce
of it. In like manner a ton of orange blossom yields but thirty to forty
ounces of the odorous essential oil.
Many of the costly plant perfumes come from tropical or semi-
tropical countries, such as Ceylon, Mexico, and Peru. But tropical
perfumes, though strong, lack the delicacy of those found in
temperate climates. Cannes, on the Riviera, gives us roses, acacias,
jasmine and neroli; from Nimes come thyme, rosemary, and
lavender oil; from Nizza, on the Italian Riviera, we get violets; from
Sicily, oranges and lemons; from Italy, iris and bergamot. English
lavender, until quite recently the most highly esteemed, came from
the towns of Hitchin and Mitcham. But I am informed that the
growing of lavender in England is no longer pursued with the same
success as formerly, and we have to regret the disappearance of this
old and truly English industry.
The natural musk, curiously enough, which comes from the musk-
deer of Tibet, is not used in making musk perfume. It is, however,
widely employed in the perfumer’s art, as it has the curious property
of enhancing the strength of other perfumes and of rendering them
permanent. Civet, also an animal product, being “the very uncleanly
flux” of the civet cat, has similar properties. It is added to other
perfumes to strengthen them (“to set them off,” as it were) and to
render them more stable.
But the most curious, and also one of the most ancient of perfumes
is ambergris, which is a fatty, wax-like substance found floating in
the sea or washed ashore. It comes from places as far apart as the
west coast of Ireland, China, and South America. The origin of this
substance was for long a mystery. But we know now that it consists
of the undigested remnants of cephalopods (squids and octopuses)
swallowed by the spermaceti whale. Ambergris is used, like musk
and civet, to render other scents durable.
But while the victory of the chemist is by no means so complete as
it is in the matter of the dyestuffs, research is steadily going on, and
the next few years will almost certainly witness an evergrowing
conquest over this department of natural chemistry.
In the meantime chemists are applying themselves to the creation
of new varieties of perfume, and, if we may judge from those
disseminated by certain ladies in public places, with a success that
startles and even irritates us. Compared with them, the love-philtres
of olden days must have been but feeble things.
“How d’you know you’re in the right ’bus?” asked the ’bus
conductor of the blind man who was confidently boarding his
vehicle.
“This is the Maida Vale ’bus,” was the contemptuous reply. “I
knows it by the smell o’ musk.”

The inexhaustible capacity of the olfactory organ, to which we

alluded above, is by no means its only marvel. It is also of the most
wonderful delicacy, equalling, even if it does not surpass, in this
respect, the sensitiveness of the eye to light.
This property of the smell-organ has been scientifically estimated.
There are many ways of doing so, that by means of Zwaardemaker’s
olfactometer being perhaps the most popular:
 “This consists of two tubes that slide one within the other, and so shaped that
one end of the inner tube may be applied to the nostril. The odorous material is
carried on the inner surface of the outer tube. When the inner tube, which is
graduated, is slipped into the outer one so as to cover completely its inner face, and
air is drawn into the nostril through the tube, the odorous surface, being covered,
gives out no particles, and no odour is perceived. By adjusting the inner tube in
relation to the outer one, whereby more or less of the odorous surface is exposed, a
point can be found where minimum stimulation occurs. The amount of odorous
substance delivered under these circumstances to the air current has been
designated by Zwaardemaker as an olfactie, the unit of olfactory stimulation.
Having determined for a given substance the area necessary for the delivery of one
olfactie, doubling that surface by an appropriate movement of the inner tube will
produce a stimulus of two olfacties, and so forth. Thus a graded series of measured
olfactory stimuli can easily be obtained. Further, by using outer tubes carrying
different odorous substances various comparisons can be instituted as measured in
olfacties” (Parker).

Instruments more elaborate and of greater accuracy have, as a

matter of fact, been devised and used, but they need not detain us.
The results obtained by these and other methods of determining
the minimum stimulus of olfaction are certainly astonishing, and
reveal as nothing else can the delicate acuteness of the sense.
Fischer and Penzoldt found that they could plainly smell one
milligram of chlorphenol evaporated in a room of 230 cubic metres
capacity. This is equivalent to 1/230,000,000 of a milligram to each
cubic centimetre of air, or, assuming 50 cubic centimetres of air as
the minimum needed for olfaction, the amount of chlorphenol
capable of exciting sensation is 1/4,600,000 of the thousandth part
of a gram—approximately 1/276,000,000 of a grain!
Many other odours have been similarly tested, and although there
is much numerical discrepancy in the records made by different
observers, all agree as to the extreme delicacy of the sense. (For
vanillin and mercaptan, see p. 39.)
Those experiments and estimations explain how it comes about
that many odours (musk, for example) may go on giving off their
scent until they part with the whole of it without undergoing any
appreciable loss of weight.
Thus there is no chemical test known to us so delicate as olfaction.
 It has been found, for example, that over-assiduous efforts at
filtering and purifying the air used for ventilation so as to remove all
noxious chemical and bacterial ingredients defeat their own end.
Such air, although to our artificial tests absolutely clean and pure,
seems to the sense of smell to lack freshness. And the nose is right.
The tests are wrong. For sojourn in such an atmosphere induces
lassitude and torpor of mind, as members of the Houses of
Parliament, where this method has been tried, know to their cost—
and ours.
But albeit so highly sensitive to minute traces, the sense
occasionally fails to perceive a highly concentrated odour.
For example, every one is aware that a bunch of violets which is
filling a room with its fragrance seems when held to the nose to have
no smell at all, or at the most to have but a vague, indefinable sort of
odour.
The effect, as a matter of fact, varies with the perfume employed.
Some, like violets, have no smell at all. Others give a different smell
when concentrated from what they give when dilute. Muskone, for
one, the essential constituent of musk, has an odour of pines when
concentrated; and storax, a delightful perfume when dilute, is
disagreeable when too powerful, and so on.
It is to be noted that the disagreeable character of these last is not
due to the mental “cloying” or “sickening” of excessive sweetness; it
is a definite odour. Nor is the anosmia for concentrated violets due to
the exhaustion of the sense.
Heyninx, comparing, as we shall see, olfaction with vision, believes
the indefinite odour of concentrated violets to be akin to the absence
of colour in white light. But this explanation seems to me to be
improbable, since the effect is due not to the combination of a
number of odours, as white light is the combination of all the colours
of the spectrum, but to the overpowering influence of a single odour.
Indeed, none of the other senses shows the same phenomenon. If
we happen to catch a momentary glimpse of the noonday sun, we
plainly see a disc of intense light (it is pale blue in colour to my eye),
surrounded by a fiery halo, before it blinds us. In the same way,
when a gun is fired close to the ear, we hear the sound before we are
deafened by it.
 It is for such reasons that perfumers never sniff at a bottle of scent;
they take a little, rub it on the back of the hand, and then wait until
the spirit has evaporated before they proceed to smell it.

The exquisite delicacy of the sense might lead us to suppose that

the olfactory organ must be quick at responding to its proper
stimulus. But such is not the case. It is, on the other hand, relatively
“slow in the uptake.”
Gleg has estimated that the reaction time for auditory sensation is
from 0·12 to 0·15 of a second, whereas the reaction time for smell is
as much as 0·5 of a second, only one sensory stimulus being slower,
that of pain, namely, which occupies 0·9 of a second.

Odours are conveyed to the olfactory end-organ in the air we

breathe. Before they can rise into the air from the odorivector (the
odorous body) and be transported they must, it is clear, pass into the
vaporous or gaseous state. (In the case of fish, of course, the odour
must undergo solution, that is pass into the liquid state.) Many of the
natural properties manifested by smells have been related to this
transformation into vapour.
Everybody knows how rich garden scents become after a shower. It
has been claimed that this results from the lightening of the
atmosphere by the storm, in consequence of which the diffusion of
odorous vapours, following the law that governs the diffusibility of
gases, is facilitated. But some of the effect must be due, one would
think, partly to the impact of the raindrops breaking up and
dispersing the halo of perfumed air that surrounds each flower, and
partly also to the evaporation of the rain-water that has absorbed
these floral emanations.
We are told also that during the night and in the chill of early
morning the air is less charged with odours because cold checks the
diffusion of gases. This may be true enough for some odours, but I
am inclined to think that the fact is not stated with perfect accuracy,
as there are certain perfumes, that of the tobacco-plant for one and
that of the night-scented stock for another, which are most prevalent
after nightfall. And it has always seemed to me that Mother Earth is
never so nicely perfumed as on a cool September morning, although
I should never be inclined to call any morning “incense-breathing,”
like Gray, for anything less like incense could scarcely be imagined.
There is no doubt, however, that frost seals up all odorivectors and
renders the air quite odourless.
A physical law appertaining to gases is also invoked to explain the
“clinging” of odours. Many, if not all, solids and liquids when
exposed to air and other gases adsorb (cause to adhere) to their
surfaces a thin, dense layer or film of the gas. If now that gas
happens to contain an odour, or is itself odorous, the odour must
also be adsorbed, and so in the case of porous materials, such as
fabrics, permeated by the odour, it lingers tenaciously in their
depths.
Odorous bodies in the solid or powdered form are known to retain
their perfume for prolonged periods. Look how long a sandal-wood
box remains aromatic. This property is supposed to depend upon the
lowered vapour tension of the odorous molecules in the depths of the
solid or powder, in virtue of which they rise into the air, or evaporate,
but slowly.
It would seem to be natural to suppose that, as vaporisation plays
such an important part in the dissemination of odours, the volatile
bodies and liquids would be more odorous than the nonvolatile. But,
as Zwaardemaker has pointed out, this is by no means always the
case. Many substances of low volatility are nevertheless highly
odorous, and vice versâ.

We turn now for a moment to consider the behaviour of the

odorous vapour in the nose.
As it passes through the nose the current of inspired air sweeps
along the lower and middle regions only; the upper or olfactory
region is not directly traversed. But almost certainly some of the air
is diverted up into the olfactory region in light eddies, and the act of
sniffing, which is a short inspiration abruptly begun and ended, and
which we instinctively resort to when trying to detect a faint odour, is
obviously of a nature to propel side-streams or eddies up into the
olfactory zone. One is reminded of the production of smoke rings
from a box.
 We smell not only during inspiration, however, but also during
expiration, the latter conveying to the olfactory region the flavours of
food and drink.
Flavours, that is to say the olfactory elements of so-called “taste,”
are not appreciated to the full until after deglutition. To most of us,
although experts and connoisseurs can determine it by smelling the
wine in the glass, the bouquet of port has really no meaning until
after it is drunk, simply because the expiratory current of air as it
ascends through the throat into the nose receives the concentrated
vapours of the warmed volatile higher alcohols which are clinging
about the fauces.
We may here remark that although we are usually able to perceive
that the odour and the flavour of a sapid food or drink are akin to
each other, the sensation of the odour anticipating that of the
flavour, yet they are by no means always identical. They may strike
us as do a plain and a coloured version of the same print. Sometimes
the flavour seems to be the more powerful, sometimes the odour.
Nearly all bouillons, for example, possess a flavour more rich and full
than the odour they give off with their steam. On the other hand,
valerian has a strong, objectionable smell, which, strange to say,
becomes subdued and relatively tolerable when that medicine is
being swallowed.

It is a curious fact, well known to expert “tasters,” that if the eyes

are kept closed during the test, the delicacy of appreciation of
flavours, and also of the smell of the wine in the glass, is entirely lost.
I cannot suggest any explanation for this curious phenomenon.

Anosmia, absence of smell, which is the next topic for our

consideration, is a not uncommon defect. It is generally the result of
some form of nasal obstruction, such as a bad “cold in the head,” as
Æsop’s fox was clever enough to remember. This type is temporary
and remediable. But there are other forms that are due to nerve-
disease, and for these nothing can be done.
A congenital anosmia is occasionally met with, and a curious
partial anosmia, reminding us of colour-blindness or tone-deafness.
I myself know people who cannot smell coal-gas unless it is very
strong, and I once knew a cook,—a cook who couldn’t smell a bad
egg!
Albinos are said to be congenitally anosmic, and there was
recorded many years ago by Hutchison the case of a negro who,
gradually losing all his pigment, became anosmic in consequence
(cited by Ogle). As the sustentacular cells of the olfactory area
contain granules of pigment (see Chapter II.), we are forced to
conclude that it must exercise a highly important function in the
perception of odours. We shall see later on that its presence is
supposed by some to support the theory that odour is a specific
ethereal vibration similar to light.

We turn now to discuss the real nature of odour, a section of our

subject which is still theoretical and highly problematical.

Having accomplished so much in the art of perfumery, the chemist

ought, one would think, to be able to tell us whether or not there is
any relationship or correspondence between odour and chemical
constitution.
When investigation of this point was begun, a hopeful fact came to
light, as it was pointed out that certain bodies of similar chemical
composition had all the same kind of smell. These were the
compounds of arsenic, bismuth, and phosphorus, all of which smell
of garlic. But it was soon realised that this fact was of little or no
significance, as the oxides of many of the metals, although quite
different from the former group, also smell of garlic. To these we may
add the instance of water and sulphuretted hydrogen, two substances
which are related chemically, as their formulæ show (H2O and H2S),
and yet one of them is odourless, While the other has a strong,
unpleasant smell. Finally, according to Deite, natural and artificial
musk have nothing in common but their smell. Chemically they are
quite different.
The property of odour, then, does not depend upon the Chemical
constitution of bodies.
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