Your Nose Knows: A Study of the Sense of Smell

‘WE HOLD…That the real division—and conflict—in man’s mind is between his primitive still-paramount animal brain now as ab initio under smell-dominance; and his lately acquired super-imposed consciousness under eye-and-ear control… That there are no physical signs of degeneracy in the nose-nosebrain apparatus. It can and unceasingly does receive incredibly faint intero- and exteroreceptive smell-messages—for the most part subconsciously… That the mystery of why a specific odor affects different persons differently and the same person differently at different times can be explained by the realization that man’s animal brain is concerned solely with the organism’s own condition welfare needs; that it is continually advised thereof by exhaled air and blood-borne messages; and that no external odor-stimulus is ever received except in fusion with and hence altered by these varying inward messages. AND OUR HYPOTHESIS IS…1. Sleeping or awake man has a functioning sense of smell acted upon by combinations always of objective and subjective odors. 2. Smell messages consciously tabooed are subconsciously accepted. 3. The total of these acceptances—past and present—is the Subconscious. And principally: 4. The automatic actions of the body are smell-responses.’