NOSE-BREATHING AND HEALTH
Owing to its tendency toward unsightly redness and malformation, the nose is very apt to be looked at from a comic point of view. Wits and caricaturists fix on it habitually for their nefarious purposes, as if it were a sort of facial clown. Indeed, ninety-nine persons in a hundred, if questioned regarding the functions of the nose, would know no answer but this: that it is sometimes ornamental, and is remotely connected with the “almost useless” sense of smell.
We have seen, however, that besides being ornamental per se, the nose plays a most important æsthetic—as well as utilitarian—rôle in giving sonority and variety to human speech; and that it is, further, of great use as an apparatus for warming, moistening, and filtering the air before it enters the lungs. Hence the importance of nose-breathing. Professor Reclam states that city people at the age of thirty usually have a whole gramme of calcareous dust in their lungs, which they can never again get rid of, and which may at any time engender dangerous disease. This is one of the bad results of mouth-breathing, but by no means the only one. “The continued irritation from dry, cold, and unfiltered air upon the mucous membrane of the upper air tract soon results,” says Dr. T. R. French, “in the establishment of catarrhal inflammation, the parts most affected being the tongue, pharynx, and larynx.... The habit of breathing through the mouth interferes with general nutrition. The subjects of this habit are usually anæmic, spare, and dyspeptic.”
That mouth-breathing at night leaves a disagreeable taste in the mouth and leads to snoring, thus interfering with refreshing sleep, has already been stated. It also injures the teeth and gums by exposing them all night to the dry air. And in the daytime it compels one to keep the mouth wide open, which imparts a rustic if not semi-idiotic expression to the face. Moreover, think of the filthy dust you swallow in walking along the street with your mouth open. However, it is useless to advise people on such matters. An attempt is made for a day or two to reform, and then—the whole matter is forgotten. These points are therefore noted here not with any missionary intentions, but merely for their scientific interest.
COSMETIC VALUE OF ODOURS
We come now to the fourth important function of the nose—the sense of smell. What has this to do with Personal Beauty? A great deal. In the first place, is not the flower-like fragrance of a lovely maiden a personal charm that has been sung of by a thousand poets, of all times? “The fragrant bosom of Andromache and of Aphrodite finds a place in Homer’s poetry,” as Professor Bain remarks; and an eccentric German professor, Dr. Jäger of Stuttgart, even wrote a book a few years ago on the Discovery of the Soul, in which he endeavoured to prove that the whole mystery of Love lies in the intoxicating personal perfumes.
It is not with such fancies, however, that we are concerned here. It can be shown on purely scientific grounds that the cause of Personal Beauty would gain an immense advantage if people would train and refine their olfactory nerves systematically, as they do their eyes and ears. Unfortunately, Kant’s absurd notion, expressed a century ago, that it is not worth while to cultivate the sense of smell, has been countenanced to the present day by the erroneous views held by the leading men of science, including Darwin, who wrote that “the sense of smell is of extremely slight service” to man.
In an article on the “Gastronomic Value of Odours,” which appeared in the Contemporary Review for November 1886, I pointed out that this under-valuation of the sense of smell is explained by the fact that the sense of taste has hitherto been credited with all the countless flavours inherent in food, whereas, in fact, taste includes only four sensations of gastronomic value—sweet, sour, bitter, and saline, all other “flavours” being in reality odours; as is proved by the fact that by clasping the nose we cannot distinguish between a lime and a lemon, different kinds of confectionery, of cheese, of nuts, of meat, etc.
Now it is well known that most people show a most amazing tolerance to insipid, badly-cooked food, gulping it down as rapidly as possible; and why? Simply because they do not know that in order to enjoy our meals we must eat slowly, and, while masticating, continually exhale the aroma-laden air through the nose (mind, not inhale but exhale). This is what epicures do unconsciously; and look at the results! No dyspepsia, no anæmia and sickly pallor, no walking skeletons;—and surely a slight embonpoint is preferable to leanness from the point of view of Personal Beauty.
If this gastronomic secret were generally known, people would insist on having better cooked food; dyspepsia, and leanness, and a thousand infirmities hostile to Beauty would disappear, and in course of time everybody would be as sleek and handsome and rosy-cheeked as a professional epicure.