The Foul and the Fragrant

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"THE IDEA OF writing a book about the perception of odors came to me as I was reading the memoirs of Jean-Noel Halle, a member of the Societe Royale de Medecine under the ancien regime and the first incumbent of the chair of public hygiene established in Paris in 1794."--incipit The Foul and the Fragrant (1982) by Alain Corbin

"So, to borrow Mary Douglas's formula, the "purity" of disinfection could wage successful battle against the "danger" of pollution."--introduction by Roy Porter to The Foul and the Fragrant (1982) by Alain Corbin

"Hence, although the literary imagination from Balzac to Zola certainly picked on smell to signal disgust toward the masses, through Romanticism it also evoked the mysteries of love, reverie, and memory. In contrast to the fecal stink of the herd, argues Corbin, there was the unique fragrance of the loved one: pure, natural. The outcomes were material as well as literary: the art of the parfumier, in a Coty, Worth, or Guerlain, ceased to be one of masking and became the secret means of revealing inner identity. And if, for Flaubert and for Huysmans above all, the power of smell was delicious, decadent, and ultimately destructive, dredging up from the depths a welter of animal associations, isn't that merely to say that the artist had already anticipated Freud's discovery of smell as the meeting point of desire and shame within the paradox of civilization?--introduction by Roy Porter to The Foul and the Fragrant (1982) by Alain Corbin

"The uproar about the odors of Paris was abundant proof of the rapid spread of Pasteur's discoveries. In 1880 none of the experts challenged the new theories. The scientific community no longer believed in miasma. Spontaneous generation no longer had any defenders. Once they had become convinced that infectious germs transmitted disease, scientists no longer associated unpleasant odor with the morbific threat. "We can repeat that everything that stinks does not kill, and everything that kills does not stink," declared the conservative Brouardel during the debate." The following year, the Dictionnaire Dechambre confirmed the pathogenic discrediting of smell."--The Foul and the Fragrant (1982) by Alain Corbin

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Le miasme et la jonquille: L'odorat et l'imaginaire social, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles (1982) is a book by French historian Alain Corbin. It treats the history of odors, olfaction and deodorisation in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was translated as The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination.

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"In a book whose insight and originality have already had a dazzling impact in France, Alain Corbin has put the sense of smell on the historical map. He conjures up the dominion that the combined forces of smells - from the seductress's civet to the ubiquitous excremental odors of city cesspools - exercised over the lives (and deaths) of the French in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."

1 Table of contents
2 See also
3 Similar works
4 Notes

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1. Air and the Threat of the Putrid 1 1
2. The Extremes of Olfactory Vigilance 22
3· Social Emanations 35
4· Redefining the Intolerable 57
5. The New Calculus of Olfactory Pleasure 71
6. The Tactics of Deodorization 89
7. Odors and the Physiology of the Social Order 1 1 I
8. Policy and Pollution 128
9· The Stench of the Poor 142
10. Domestic Atmospheres 161
II. The Perfumes of Intimacy 176
12. The Intoxicating Flask 200
13· "Laughter in a Bead of Sweat" 211
14· The Odors of Paris 222

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Similar works

Rats, Lice and History by Hans Zinsser
Histoire de la merde by Dominique Laporte

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Notes

Introduction 1. ].-N. Halle, "Proces-verbal de la visite faite Ie long des deux rives de la riviere Seine, depuis le pont-Neuf jusqu'a la Rappee et la Garre, le 14 fevrier 1790," Histoire et Memoires de la Societe Royale de Medecine, 10 (1789), lxxxvi. 2. ].-N. Halle, Recherches sur la nature et les effets du mepbitismedes losses d'aisances (1785), 57-58. 3. ].-N. Halle, "Air des hopitaux de terre et de mer," in Encyclopedie metbodique. Medecine (1787),571. 4. On the pleasures ofsight in the eighteenth century, see Mona Ozouf, "L'Irnage de la ville chez Claude-Nicolas Ledoux," Annales. Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 2 I (November-December 1966), 1276. 5. Lucien Febvre, Le Probleme de l'incroyance au XVIe siecle (Paris, 1942). 6. In his Introduction a la France moderne. Essai de psycbologie bistorique, I500- I640 (Paris, 196 I), Robert Mandrou, influenced by Lucien Febvre, devotes a long chapter to the history of perception at the dawn of modern times; as far as I know this is the only attempt at a synthesis of the subject. Since the publication of Pierre Francastel's work, the historical analysis of sight has inspired numerous books, most recently those by Michael Baxandall. Number 40 ofActesdela Recherche en Sciences Sociales (198 I) is devoted entirely to this aspect ofthe sociology of perception. In La Fantasmagorie (Paris, 1982), a masterly work devoted to the study of the mirror image and the transfiguration of the perceptive universe in the literature of fantasy, Max Milner analyzes the bonds that, according to Kant, link sensory history and the inquiry into identity. As early as 1967,Jean-Paul Aron's Essai sur la sensibilite alimentaire aParis au XIXe siecle (Paris) inaugurated a long series of works devoted to the history oftaste. The Institur Francais du Gout periodically endeavors to bring together at Tours all researchers into the human sciences concerned with psychosociology and the history of eating behavior. However, very few of these studies concern the gustative sensation, the poverty of which is well known: it is in fact the sense of smell that contributes the refinement of flavors. Mention must also be made of the interesting book by Ruth Winter, a journalist for the Los Angeles Times: Scent Talk among Animals (New York, 1977). It contains a copious bibliography of recent works in physiology and experimental psychology and, notably, references to books by]. Le Magnen and by A. Holley, French experts in these aspects of osmology. The aesthetics of the sense of smell is the subject of Edmond Roudnitska's remarkable . 235 NOTES TO PAGES 5-6 L'Esthitique en question (Paris, 1977), which includes an interesting study of Kant's rejection of the sense of smell. Finally, mention should be made of the whole body of work by Peter Reinhart Gleichmann. For some years he has been extending the research of Norbert Elias and studying the interrelationships between the change in emotions, the transformation of the images of the body, and the techniques of social control that the construction of cleansing systems reveals. Especially relevant to our purposes are his articles on the integration of the physiological functions in the domestic sphere and the extent of the chain reactions engendered by this domestication; see, for example, "Des villes propres et sans odeur,' Urbi, April 1982. However, his primary focus is central Europe between 1866 and 1930; he says nothing about the pre-Pasteurian mythologies and minimizes the importance of the period studied here. In the same field see also Dominique Laporte, Histoire de la merde (Paris, 1979). 7. See Jean Ehrard, L'Idee de nature en France dans fa premiere moitie du XVIII· siecle (Paris, 1963), 676. 8. Ibid., p. 685. 9. A survey of these episodes in Enlightenment philosophy is beyond the scope of this book. Claire Salomon-Bayer, L'Institution de la science et l'experience du vivant (Paris, 1978), 204 ff., has successfully analyzed how scholars use the observations of the homo ferus, the philosophical fiction (Condillac's statue), the experimental fictions (the healed blind man of Maupertuis), or unforeseen accidents (Rousseau's fall during his second promenade) to try to solve the problems posed by empirical knowledge. 10. Jacques Guillerme, "Le Malsain et l'econornie de la nature," XVIII· Siecle, 9 (1977), 61. I I. "All the diversities of flavors, odors, sounds, colors, in a word, all our sensations are only the action ofGod upon us, diversified according to our needs"; Pluche, Spectacle de la nature, vol. 4 (1739), 162. 12. Febvre, Le Probleme de l'incroyance, 461-472. 13. Emphasized by Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1947), 36 (rst ed. 1755)· 14. Robert Boyle, The General History of the Air (London, 1692), had noted that musk, despite the strong odors it emitted, lost nothing, or almost nothing, of its substance. Albrecht von Haller, Elementa physiologiae corporis bumani, vol. 5 (Lausanne, 1763), 157, kept papers perfumed by a single grain of ambergris for more than forty years with no diminution in their odor. Hermann Boerhaave propounded as many observations confirming the spiritus rector theory. In his view, far from being the emanation of corpuscles separated from the smelling body, odor was a subtle fluid, "a volatile being, very fleeting, very expansible, weightless, completely invisible, inaccessible to the senses were it not for the olfactory membrane"; quoted in Hippolyte Cloquet, Osphrisiologie ou traite des odeurs, zd ed. (1821), 39-40. For the majority of scholars that guiding spirit, called aroma at the end of the eighteenth century, was oily in nature. It seemed obvious, however, that it did not assume the same form everywhere, and Pierre Joseph Maquer, one of the most eminent chemists of the day, strove to catalog its various manifestations. NOTES TO PAGES 6-I I It was precisely this variety that eventually discredited Boerhaave's theory. Since aroma perpetually proved different from itself, its existence as a principle could no longer be sustained. This at least is what Nicolas Le Cat (Traiti des sensations et des passions en general et des sens en particulier, vol. 2 [1767J, 234) and the chevalier Louis de Jaucourt ("Odorat," in the 1765 Encyclopedie) already thought. Although the corpuscular theory, already formulated by Theophrastus and approved by the Cartesians, remained hypothetical until Fourcroy and Berthollet proved it well founded, a number of Halle's contemporaries thought that bodies emitted several particles of smell that formed part of their substance. 15. Especially for Buffon. 16. See Condillac's view of the role of language; Ehrard, cu« de nature, 686. 17. Haller, quoted in "Odorat," Encyclopedie, supplement (1777). 18. Pere du Tertre, Histoire naturelle et morale des iles Antilles . . . (1658); Pere Joseph Francois Lafitau, Moeurs des sauvages americains ... (1724); Alexander von Humboldt, Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouoelle-Espagne (I8II). 19. Notably Samuel Thomas von Soemmerring and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. 20. "There have been observations," wrote Haller again in 1777, "of a child raised in a wilderness sniffing the grass as a sheep would, and choosing by the odor the piece he would like to eat. Having been returned to society and become accustomed to different foods, he lost this trait"; quoted in "Odorar." 2 1. See Le Cat, Traite de sensations, 230. 22. An opinion also found in Haller, Elements de pbysiologie, 2 vols. (1769), 2:33. 23. Jaucourt, "Odorat." 24. Haller, "Odorat." 25. Rousseau, Emile (Paris, 1966), 200-20 I; odors "exert an influence not so much by what they give forth as by what they hold in abeyance." 26. Jaucourt, "Odorat": "There is a mysterious rapport between the vital principle and fragrant bodies." 27. "I began to see calmly and to hear effortlessly when a light, fresh breeze brought me scents that caused me to blossom inwardly and gave me a feeling of love for myself," declares the first man in Buffon's account; De l'bomme (Paris, 197 I), 2 I 5. I. Air and the Threat 0/the Putrid I. For example, Boissier de Sauvages, winner ofthe Dijon Academy competition on this subject in 1753, remained loyal to the mechanist conception of the air, namely, that it was composed of small spheres or molecules separated by hollow interstices from which other substances seeped out; Francois Boissier de Sauvages, Dissertation oit ton recherche comment l'air, suivant ses differentes quaNtes, agit sur le corps bumain (r 7 54). In the previous century, Boerhaave had regarded the air as a simple tool, an intermediary not involved in chemical exchanges. 2. "That is why," Malouin wrote in 1755, "the same foods are digested differently, according to the differences in the air breathed"; consequently, digestion was . 237 NOTES TO PAGES 12-14 better in the country than in the town. Paul-Jacques Malouin, Chimie medicinale, vol. I, p. 54. 3. On the importance that the concept offiber assumed in the eighteenth century, see Jean-Marie Alliaume, "Anatornie des discours de reforrne," in Cornite de la Recherche et du Developpernent en Architecture, Politiques de l'habitat (r8oc>-r850) (Paris, 1977), 150. 4. Jean Ehrard, L'Idee de nature, has written some illuminating articles on this subject. 5. Men of letters, Paul Victor de Seze noted, were well aware that the morning air "gives a strange disposition to study"; Recherches pbysiologiques et pbilosophiques sur la sensibilite ou la vie animale (1786), 241. 6. On this subject see the fine article by Owen Hannaway and Caroline Hannaway, "La Fermeture du cimeriere des Innocents," XVIIIe siecle, 9 (1977), 181-191. 7. In his eyes, the electric fluid constituted the neural fluid itself-which was tantamount to discounting the theory of animal spirits. 8. See Ehrard, L'Idee de nature, 701 ff. 9. Boyle, GeneralHistory oftheAir. See also John Arbuthnot, An Essay Concerning the Effects ofAir on Human Bodies (17 33), especially 92 ff. 10. For Hippocrates' work and its significance, see Robert Joly, Hippocrate, medecine grecque (Paris, 1964), especially "Des airs, des eaux, des lieux," 7 5 ff. The influence that, depending on school, Greek doctors attributed to the air was extremely complex; see Jeanne Ducatillon, Polemiques dans la collection bippocratique (Thesis Paris IV, 1977), 105 ff. The Hippocratic treatises, by subordinating medicine to knowledge of the human body, moved away from the medical theories of the philosophers, who claimed to explain all diseases by the same cause and adopted a cosmological viewpoint giving greater emphasis to the winds than did the doctors of the school of Kos. See the analyses of the treatise "Des vents" by Joly (Hippocrate, 25-33) and Ducatillon (Polimiques). Quite recently, however, Antoine Thivel (Cnide et Cos? Essaisur les doctrines medicales dans la collection bippocratique (Paris, 198 I J) has questioned the legitimacy of this distinction between the two schools. On the medicine of constitutions, see Jean-Paul Desaive, Jean-Pierre Gaubert, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, and Jean Meyer, ... Medecins, dimats et epidemies ala fin du XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1972). II. See Dr. Pierre Thouvenel, Memoire chimique et medicinalsur la nature, les usages et les effetsdel'air, des aliments et les medicaments, relativement al'economie animale (178o). 12. Arbuthnot, Essay Concerning Effects of Air, 208-209. 13. Thouvenel, Memoire chimique, 27. "The air," he wrote belatedly but always from this perspective, "must be neither too virginal nor too spirituous, neither too vapid nor too keen, neither too heavy nor too dull, not too concentrated nor too solvent, not too diluted nor too stale, not too exciting nor too nourishing, neither too septic nor too antiseptic, not too drying nor too moist, nor too relaxing, etc." (p. 24). 14. Arbuthnot, Essay Concerning Effects ofAir, 2 I 3- 2 I 5. 15. See Jean Ehrard, "Opinions medicales en France au XVIlIe siecle: La peste NOTES TO PAGES 14-2 I et l'idee de contagion," Annales. Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 12 (JanuaryMarch 1957), 46-59. 16. Guillerme, "Le Malsain," 61-72. 17. Karl Wilhelm Scheele's work summarized this compulsive labor very well, and, better still, Jean-Godefroi Leonhardy's Supplement au traite chimique de l'air et du feu de M. Scheele and Tableau abrege des nouvelles decouvertes sur les dioerses especes d'air (1785). 18. Joseph Priestley, Observations on Air (London, 1774). 19. See Guillerme, "Le Malsain," 63. 20. Ibid., p. 61. 2 I. Pierre Darmon, Le My the de la procreation al'age baroque (Paris, 1977). 22. Thouvenel, Memoire chimique, 13. 23. In his Historia Naturalis, especially in Historia Vitae et Mortis (1623); for the history ofresearch into decomposition, see Jacques-Joseph de Gardane, Essais sur la putrefaction des bumeurs animales (1769). 24. Gardane, Essais sur la putrefaction, V. 25. In Greek antiquity, solar and imputrescible aromatics, with myrrh as their archetype, formed the antithesis to humid and putrescible vegetation, symbolized by lettuce. See Marcel Detienne, Les[ardins d'Adonis. La mythologie des aromates en Grice (Paris, 1972). 26. John Pringle, "Some experiments on substances resisting putrefaction," Philosopbical Transactions, 47 (1750),480-488,525-534. David MacBride, Essais d'experiences (1766). 27. The treatises by Barthelemy-Camille Boissieu, Toussaint Bordenave, and Guillaume-Lambert Godart are published collectively as Dissertations sur les antiseptiques ... (Dijon, 1769). 28. Quoted in Gardane, Essais sur la putrefaction, 12 I. 29. Robert Mauzi, L'Idee du bonbeur au XVIIle siecle (Paris, 1960),273 ff. 30. Madame Thiroux d'Arconville, Essai pour seruir al'bistoire de la putrefaction (1766). 3 I. Godart, Dissertations sur les antiseptiques, 253-258. 32. Quoted in Gardane, Essais sur la putrefaction, 220. 33. Ibid., p. 12 4. 34. Guillerme, "Le Malsain," 61. 35. Ehrard, "Opinions medicales," studies the origin and evolution of the theory of miasmas and its initial link with the corpuscular theories that emerged from Boyle's work. Ehrard makes a distinction among this theory of miasmas, that of leavens, and that of worms or insects. 36. Guillerme, "Le Malsain," 63.

37. John Cowper Powys, Morwyn. Robert Favre, La Mort dans la litterature et la pensee francaise au siecle des Lumieres (Paris, 1978), 403, recalls Chamfort's version of Saint Theresa de Avila's definition of hell as "the place where it stinks and where there is no love."

38. Compare the conviction that obsessed the Romantics, namely that death was necessary for the birth of a new world. Examples are the death of Gauvin and Cimourdin in Hugo's Quatre-vingHreize and, much earlier, Novalis's Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 39. Guillerme, "Le Malsain," 62. . 239 NOTES TO PAGES 22-25 2. The Extremes of Olfactory Vigilance 1. Ehrard, L'Idee de nature, 710. 2. Boissier de Sauvages, Dissertation, 5I. 3. Ibid. 4. This is the title of Becher's book, which was published in Frankfurt in 1669. 5. This idea of a counterbalance correcting mephitism underlies Arbuthnot's Essay Concerning Effects ofAir. 6. See Boyle, General History of the Air. 7. Bernardino Ramazzini, De morbis arti/icum diatriba (Padua, 1713), trans. A. F. de Fourcroy (1777), 533,327,534. 8. See Chapter 9, pp. 155-156. 9. M. de Chamseru, "Recherches sur la nyctalopia," Histoire et Memoires de la Societe Royale de Medecine, 8 (1786), 167 ff. 10. ].-B. Theodore Baumes, Memoire . . . sur la question: Peut-on determiner par l'obseruation quelles sontles maladies quiresultentdes emanations des eauxstagnantes ... (1789), 234· 11. Ibid., p. 165. In 1815 Etienne Tourtelle still echoed this complaint; Elements d'hygiene, vol. I, p. 277. 12. Paul Savi, "Considerations sur l'insalubrite de l'air dans les Marernmes," Annates de Chimie et de Physique, 3d. ser., I (184 1), 347. 13. Tourtelle, Elements d'hygiene, 278. 14. An obscure subject, earlier touched on by Jean Roger in Les Sciences de la vie dans la pensee frencaise du XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1963), 642-647. Jean-Baptiste Robinet (De la nature) became the exponent of this theory of universal vitality. 15. Michel-Augustin Thouret, Rapport sur la voirie de Montfaucon, 13 (read November II, 1788, to the Societe Royale de Medecine). 16. "Rapport fait a l'Acadernie Royale des Sciences le 17 mars 1780 par MM. Duhamel, de Montigny, Le Roy, Tenon, Tiller, et Lavoisier, rapporteur," Memoires deI'Academie des Sciences (1780), in Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Oeuvres (1865), 3:493; the italics are mine. 17. For the symbolic value of the deepest dungeon and its role in preserving messages from the past, see, for example, Victor Hugo, especially Quatreuingt-treize and L'Homme qui rit. 18. See Boissier de Sauvages, Dissertation, 54. 19. Bruno Fortier, "La Politique de 1'espace parisien," in La Politique de l'espece parisien ala fin de l'Ancien Regime, ed. Bruno Fortier (Paris, 1975),32. 20. Louis-Sebastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 12 vols. (1782-1788), 1:21. 21. Fortier, "La Politique de l'espace parisien," 116-125; Favre, La Mort dans la litterature, 398. 22. See Bachelard, La Terre et les reveries de la volonté (Paris, 1948), 129 ff.; this concern with muddy material concealed an ambivalence that has provided psychoanalysts with material for copious dissertations. 23. See Pierre Chauvet, Essai sur la proprete de Paris (1797), 24, and especially Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 1:213, and ].-H. Ronesse, Vues sur la proprete des rues de Paris (1782), 14. The precision with which the latter two analyze the 240 • NOTES TO PAGES 25-28 mud of the streets of Paris reveals the importance they attached to the substances. The texts quoted by Pierre Pierrard on the muds of Lille show the same analytic precision; La Vie ouuriere a Lille sous le Second Empire (Paris, 1965). 24. Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, "Essai sur les cloaques ou egours de la ville de Paris" (1824), in Hygiene publique, 2 vols. (1836), 1:219-220. 25. Michel Eugene Chevreul, "Mernoire sur plusieurs reactions chimiques qui interessent l'hygiene des cites populeuses," Annales d'Hygiene Publique et de Medecine Legale, 50 (1853), 15 (read November 9 and 16, 1846). 26. Ibid., pp. 36, 38. 27· Ibid.,p. 17· 28. P.-A. Piorry, Des habitations et de l'infiuence de leurs dispositions sur l'bomme en sante et en maladie (1838),49. 29. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 4:218. 30. John Howard, The State of the Prisons, 3d ed. (London, 1784), 88. 3I. Philippe Passot, Deslogements insalubres, de leurinfluence et deleur assainissement (185 r). On this subject, Passor quotes (p. 24) Francis Devay's L'Hygiene des families. 32. Quoted in Passot, Deslogements insalubres, 25. 33. Ibid. 34. Mathieu Geraud, Essai sur la suppression des fosses d'aisances et de toute espece de voirie, sur la maniere de conuertir en combustibles les substances qu'on y renferme (Amsterdam, 1786), 34· 35. James Lind, An Essay on the most effectual Means of preserving the Health of Seamen (London, 1757), 17; Henri Louis Duharnel-Dumonceau, Moyens de conserver la sante aux equipages des vaisseaux; avec la maniere de purifier l'air des salles des h6pitaux (Paris, 1759), 131. 36. Howard, State of Prisons, 346-348. 37. John Howard, An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe (Warrington, 1789), 144· 38. There were similar complaints about wool's capacity for impregnation. 39. Chauvet, Essai sur la proprete de Paris, 17· 40. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 7:226. 41. There is a long digression on this subject in Alfred Franklin, La Vie privee d'autrefois, vol. 7, L'Hygiene (Paris, 1900), 153 ff. 42. On the general ineffectiveness of the Paris police, see Arlette Farge, Vivre dans la rue aParis au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 1979), 193 ff., especially p. 209. 43. In fact these craftsmen used stagnant urine; see Ramazzini, De morbis artificum, 149· 44. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 11:54· 45. Chauvet, Essai sur la proprete de Paris, 18. 46. La Morandiere (1764), quoted by Dr. Augustin Cabanes, Moeurs intimes du passe (Paris, 1908), 382. 47. Arthur Young, Travels during theyears 1787, 1788 and 1789.·. of the Kingdom of France (London, 1792), 160. 48. John Pringle, Observations on the Diseases of the Army (1752), 300. Pringle based his conclusions on the experiments conducted by Homberg as early as 171 I . • 241 NOTES TO PAGES 28-3 I 49. Geraud, Essai sur la suppression desfosses, 38. 50. Laborie, A.-A. Cadet the younger, and A.-A. Parmentier, Observations sur les fosses d'aisances et moyensde preoenirlesinconcenients de leur vidange (1778), 106. 5 I. Chauvet, Essai sur la proprete de Paris, 38. 52. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 11:55· 53. Thouret, Rapport sur la ooirie, 15. 54. Geraud, Essai sur la suppression desfosses, 66. 55. Ibid., p. 96. 56. Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, Rapport sur les ameliorations aintroduire dans les fosses d'aisances, reprinted in Hygiene publique, 2:350. 57. Voltaire, "Dejection," in Dictionnaire philosophique (Geneva, 1764). 58. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 10:250. 59. Pierre ].-B. Nougaret and ].-H. Marchand, Le Vidangeur sensible (17n). The article on nauseas that gave rise to the idea of staging this play-with the professed aim of combatting the "affectation" of disgust (p. xiv)-attests to the fascination with excrement and to the new sensitivity. 60. Halle, Recherches sur la nature du mepbitisme, n-81. Precise analyses can also be found in the books cited by Laborie and Thouret. 61. Thouret, Rapport sur la ooirie, 2 I. 62. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 7:229: "The excrement of the masses with their varied shapes is constantly before the eyes of duchesses, marquesses, and princesses." Not until the nineteenth century was there an attempt to identify the odor of excrement only with the poor, and this happened on another count. 63. See especially Philippe Aries, L'Homme devant la mort (Paris, 1978); Pierre Chaunu, La Mort a Paris, XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe siecles (Paris, 1978); Pascal Hintermeyer, Politiques de la mort (Paris, 1981); and Francois Lebrun, Les Hommes et la mort en Anjou aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles (Paris, 1975). 64. Abbe Charles Poree, Lettres sur la sepulture dans les eglises (Caen, 1745). 65. Henri Haguenot, Memoire sur les dangers des inhumations (1744). 66. Felix Vicq d'Azyr, Essai sur les lieux et les dangers des sepultures (In8), cxxxi. 67. Dr. Jacques de Horne, Memoire sur quelques objets qui interessent plus partieslierement la salubrite de la ville de Paris (1788), 4. 68. See A.-A. Cadet de Vaux, Memoire bistorique et physique sur le cimetiere des Innocents (178r). 69. Charles Lande, Nouveaux Elements d'hygiene, 2 vols. (1838), 2:348. 70. Francois-Emmanuel Fodere, Traitt de midecine legale et d'hygiene publique ou de police de sante . . . , 6 vols. (1813), 5:302. 7 I. Such analyses led Pierre-Toussaint Navier to construct a theory that morbific rays rose from corpses; Sur les dangers des exhumations precipitees et sur les abus des inhumations dans les eglises (1775). 72. See Louis Jean Marie Daubenton et al., Rapport des memoires et projets pour eloigner les tueries de l'interieur de Paris. At that time sixteen slaughterhouses operated in the open air along the rue St.-Martin from the rue Au Maire to the rue Montmorency, and six others along adjacent streets. 73. De Horne, Memoire, I I. 242 • NOTES TO PAGES 32-36 74. Thouret, Rapport sur la ooirie, 28. Stench was a basic element of urban pathology; see Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire de la France urbaine, vol. 3 (Paris, 1981), 292 ff. 75. Mercier, quoted on p. 54. 76. See especially M. F.-B. Ramel, De l'influencedes marais et des etangssur la sante de l'homme (Marseilles, year X) (first published in 1784 in the Journal de Medecinei. 77. Malouin, Cbimie medicinale, 62. 78. Duharnel-Dumonceau, Moyens de conserver la sante, 40. 79. Abbe Pierre Bertholon, De la salubrite de l'air des oilles et en particulier des moyens de la procurer (Monrpellier, 17 86), 6, 7. 80. Moreover, the word pollution did not then have the meaning we give it. 8!. Joseph Raulin (1766), quoted in Ramel, De l'influence des marais, 63. 82. Fodere, Traite de medecine legale, 5: 168. See Jean-Baptiste Monfalcon, Histoire des marais (1824), 32. This work also gives a well-documented synthesis of the history of theories devoted to the "nature of emanations from swamps" (pp. 69-78). The quays of the Charente were the subject of a considerable literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century. See Alain Corbin, "Progres de l'economie rnaraichine," in Histoire du Poitou, du Limousin et des pays charentais, ed. E. R. Labande (Toulouse, 1976), 391 ff. and bibliography, 413- 4 14. 83· Baumes, Memoire, 99· 84. Jan Ingenhousz considered that the gases were phlogisticated, septic, and putrid all at the same time; Experiences sur les vegetaux, specialement sur la propriet« qu'iis possident a un haut degre soit d'ameliorer l'air quand ils sont au soleil, soit de le corrompre la nuit ou lorsqu'ils sont a l'ombre (Paris, 17 87), 167 (r st ed. London, 1779). To contemporary scientists this was confirmation that swampy emanations were an aggregation of every menace. 85. Baumes, Memoire, 7· 86. Ibid. 87. Fodere, T raiti de medecine legale, 5: 1 64 ff. 88. Baumes, Memoire, 196. 3. Social Emanations 1. Vitalist doctrine held that not all life processes could be explained by the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. As early as 1786, de Seze (Recherches pbysiologiques, 85) asserted that it was Bordeu and Anne-Charles Lorry who, with Paul Joseph Barthez, ensured the defeat of the mechanistic perspective, with its springs, pumps, and levers. 2. Theophile de Bordeu, Recherches sur les maladies cbroniques, vol. 1 (1775), 378, 379, 383. 3. Dr. Jean-Joseph de Brieude, "Mernoire sur les odeurs que nous exhalons, considerees comme signes de la sante er des maladies," Histoire et Memoires de la Societe Royale de Medecine, 10 (1789); Julien-Joseph Virey, "Des odeurs que repandenr les animaux vivants," RecueilPeriodique de la Societe de Medecine de Paris, 8 (year VIII), 161 ff. and 241 ff.; Augustin-Jacob Landre-Beauvais, . 243 NOTES TO PAGES 36-39 "Des signes tires des odeurs," in Semeiotique ou traite des signes des maladies, 2d ed. (1815), 419-432. 4. Isis Edmund Charles Falize, "Quelle est la valeur des signes fournis par l'odeur de la bouche?" in Questions sur diverses branches des sciences medicales (Thesis, Paris, April 12, 1839). 5. Dr. Ernest Monin, Les Odeurs du corps humain (1885). At this period osphresiology exercised a new fascination. 6. See Chapter I I, p. 187. 7. Bordeu, Recherches, 435· 8. Yvonne Verdier, Paeans de dire.facons de faire (Paris, 1979), especially pp. 20- 77· 9. Bordeu, Recherches, 411. 10. Ibid., p. 414. I 1. Quoted in ibid., p. 4 12. 12. Ibid., p. 413. 13. Brieude, "Mernoire," li. 14. Haller, Elements depbysiologie, 2:253. The theory underlies Monin's Les Odeurs du corps humain. 15. In Aristotle's opinion the humor became a cause of decay if it was not sufficiently "cooked by the heat of the body," and if the resultant products were not evacuated. 16. Bordeu, Recherches, 469. 17. In his notes to the 1844 edition of Cabanis's Rapports du physique et du moral de l'bomme, 1. Peisse stated with regard to specific bodily odors: "Among weak races or individuals, this odor is less marked; it is more strongly marked in very animalized species, in very vigorous bodies." 18. Ingenhousz, Experiences sur les vegitaux, 15 I. 19. See the discussion in Chapter 13, p. 2 I 8. 20. Bordeu, Recherches, xlvii. 21. Ibid., p. 428. 22. For example, Abbe Armand-Pierre jacquin, De la sante, ouvrage utile atout le monde (1762), 283· 23. Xenophon, Symposium; Montaigne, "Des senteurs," in Essais (Paris, 1950), 351. 24. Chevalier Louis de jaucourt, "Muse," in Encyclopedie (1765). 25. See Michele Duchet, Anthropologie etbistoireau Siecle des Lumieres (Paris, 1977)· In fact the author shows that there were not just one but several anthropological theories at that time (p. 409); the following discussion is in line with Duchet's analysis of Buffon's theory (pp. 199 ff.). 26. Brieude, "Mernoire," xlvii. 27. Duchet, Antbropologie, 203. 28. See Brieude, "Mernoire," lv, and Monin, Les Odeurs du corps humain, 5I. 29. Brieude, "Mernoire," xlix. 30. See Virey, "Des odeurs," 249. 31. jean-Noel Vuarnet makes this point in Extases feminines (Paris, 198o), 38- 45. His book also contains a bibliography on the "odors of sanctity," often associated with myroblitisme and incorruptibility. On this subject see also Monin, 244 . NOTES TO PAGES 39-43 US Odeurs du corps bumain, 61. When alive, Saint Trevere smelled of roses, lilies, and incense, Saint Rose of Viterbo of roses, Saint Cajetan of oranges, Saint Catherine of violets, Saint Theresa de Avila of jasmine and irises, and Saint Lydwine of cinnamon bark (see Joris-Karl Huysmans, Saint Lydwine de Scbiedam [Paris, I90IJ). After death, Madeleine de Bazzi, Saint Stephen of Muret, Saint Philip Neri, Saint Paternien, Saint Orner of Therouanne, and Saint Francois Olympias exhaled sweet odors. In the nineteenth century, alienists considered this phenomenon "the expression of a neurosis" (Monin, p.6I). 32. Brieude, "Mernoire," xlviii. 33. Landre-Beauvais, "Des signes tires des odeurs," 423. 34. Cloquet, Osphresiologie, 66. 35. Virey, "Des odeurs." This article gives the sources for travelers' numerous observations about the stench of savages. 36. Cloquet, Ospbresiologie, 15. 37. In the broad sense in which Buffon as well as Helvetius used the term, climate designated not only latitude and meteorological characteristics but also the nature of the soil and the inhabitants' way of life; that is, data on both the natural environment and the result of human adaptation (see Duchet, Antbropologie, 322). 38. Cloquet, Osphresiologie, 66. 39. Brieude, "Mernoire," Ix. 40. Ibid., p. 1. 41. Ibid., pp. li-dii. The characters in Nougaret and Marchand's Le Vidangeur sensible compare the odors of the cesspool clearer and the butcher. 42. The topic also occurs in the Aristotelian Problems. 43. This progression reflected the breakdown in equilibrium that made putrefaction triumph within the living organism. 44. Bordeu, Recherches, 470. 45. Brieude, "Mernoire," lv. 46. Ibid., p. lxii, and Landre-Beauvais, "Des signes tires des odeurs," 431. 47. H. A. P. A. Kirwan, De I'odorat et de I'influence des odeurs sur l'economie animale (1808), 26. 48. For an account of these experiments see Ingenhousz, Experiences sur les vegetaux, I 5 I ff. 49. Louis jurine, "Mernoire sur les avantages que la medecine peut retirer des eudiornetres," Histoire et Memoires de la Societe Royale de Medecine, 10 (n89), 19-100 (read August 28, 1787), describes minutely the method of removal used. 50. Jules-Cesar Gattoni, ibid., p. 13 2 . 51. At the most, jurine's analysis of intestinal gases confirmed Claude Louis Berthollet's belief that wind originated in the putrid decomposition of meats. 52. Bordeu, Recherches, 523. 53. Quoted in Monin, Les Odeurs du corps bumain, 239. The full significance of this observation emerges in the light of Bichat's definition of death. 54. On Hecquet see Ehrard, "Opinions medicales," 44; David Hartley, Explication physique des sens, des idees et des mouvements tant volontaires qu'inoolontaires, vol. . 245 NOTES TO PAGES 44-46 I (Paris, 17 55), 449-45 I; on the syrnpathists see Mauzi, L'ldee du bonbeur, 3 13-314. 55. Charles-Francois Tiphaigne de la Roche, L'Amour devoile ou le systeme des sympatbistes (1749), 45, 48, and 113· 56. Mirabeau, Erotika Biblion (1783), 19. 57. Preface to Memoires, 1744-1756 (Paris, 1977), Iii. 58. This episode has been well studied by Gerard Wajeman, "Odor di femmina," Omicar, 7 (1976), 108-110. 59. Dr. Augustin Galopin, Le Parfum de la femme et le sens olfactif dans l'amour. Etude psycbo-pbysiologique (Paris, 1886). On this subject see p. 139. 60. Goethe, Faust, part II. 61. Verdier, Paeans de dire, detects among the peasant women of Minot, in the Chatillonais, the persistence of beliefs in analogies among the cosmic, the mineral, and the human. 62. A.-A. Cadet de Vaux, "De l'armosphere de la femme et de sa puissance," Revue Encyclopedique, 9 (182 I), 445. 63. See Verdier, Facons de dire, 52 ff. 64. See Jean Borie, "Une Gynecologic passionnee," in Miserable et glorieuse la femme du XIXesiecle, ed. J.-P. Aron (Paris, 1980), 152-189. On this subject see also Therese Moreau's works, for example, Le Sang de l'bistoire (Paris, 198 2). 65. Evariste-Desire Desforges de Parny, "Le Cabinet de toilette"; Francois-joachim de Pierres, cardinal de Bernis, "L'Ete," in Les Saisons et les jours. Poemes (1764), sings of "the perfume of [nymphs'] blond tresses." 66. See Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux (Paris, 1977),227. 67. Jean-Jacques Menuret de Chambaud, Essaisur Paction del'air dans les maladies contagieuses (1781), 41. 68. Havelock Ellis, Sexual Selection in Man, vol. 4 of Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Philadelphia, 1905),74. 69. At the end of the nineteenth century the theme was more amply developed. The psychologist Fere considered that this odor exercised a dynamic effect that could be used in industry; for example, weary ironing women got fresh energy from smelling the effluvia of their corsets; see Charles Fere, Sensation et mouvement. Etudes experimentales depsycbo-mecanique (1887), 50, and La Pathologie des emotions (1892), 440. 70. Rousseau, Emile, 201; Parny, "Le Cabinet de toilette." 7 1. As he confides in L'Anti-]ustine. 72. As far as I know, vaginal odor was not mentioned in public and integrated into the range of odors that could be mentioned until Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn. The author considered initiation into these odors a rite of olfactory passage. 73. Jean-Baptiste Silva, "Dissertation ou l'on examine la rnaniere dont l'esprit seminal est porte a l'ovaire," in Dissertations et consultations medicinales deMM. Cbirac et Silva, vol. I (1744), 188 ff., expanded this theme at length. 74. On this subject see Yvonne Kniebiehler's works. 75. Putain C'prcstitute") from puanteur ("stink"). Restif opted for the popular etymology that derived putain from Latin putida ("stinking"). NOTES TO PAGES 46-49 76. Silva, "Dissertation," 189. On the other hand, the ancients imagined that continence gave women a repulsive stench; Detienne, Les fardins d'Adonis, 173. The interruption of conjugal relations, separation ofsun and earth, caused the Lemnians' stink and the unpleasant, less powerful odor of the women of the Thesmophoria (ibid., p. 176). As far as I know, this aspect of the question was no longer mentioned in the eighteenth century. 77. Boissier de Sauvages, Journal des Savants, February 1746, p. 356; quoted in Fodere, Traite de medecine legale, 6:232. The author was writing about the epizootic that prevailed in the Vivarais: when men "breathe the stinking blasts exhaled by the stomachs of these oxen, even when alive, from nearby, they are attacked by colics, followed by vomiting, and even diarrhea, which often makes the stomach swell up in an astonishing way." 78. Fodere, Traiti de medecine legale, 5:298. 79. "Man's breath is mortal for man," stated Rousseau; see Francois Dagogner, "La Cure d'air: Essai sur l'histoire d'une idee en therapeutique medicale," Tbales, 10 (1959), 87. 80. Verdier, Paeans de dire, found this at Minot. An old woman reported of a friend: "She caught it like an epidemic to my sister with her breath" (p. 46). 81. Etienne Senancour, "Les Introuvables," in Obermann, 2 vols. (1844), 2:48. 82. Arbuthnot, Essay Concerning Effects 0/Air, 189. 83. Boissier de Sauvages, Dissertation, 56. 84. Charles-Polydore Forget, Medecine navale ou nouveaux elements d'bygiene, de patbologie et de therapeutique medico-cbirugicales, 2 vols. (1832), 1:332. Note that this text is later than the other evidence quoted in this chapter. 85. Stephen Hales, A Description 0/Ventilators (London, 1743), 51. 86. Forget, Medecine nauale, 1:184. The following paragraphs are a synthesis of numerous contemporary descriptions, particularly those by DuhamelDumonceau, Moyens de conseruer la sante. 87. Forget, Medecine nauale, 1 :29. 88. Ibid., p. 186. 89. Ibid. See also Fodere, Traitt de medecine legale, 6=476 ff. 90. Alexandre Parenr-Duchatelet, Recherches pour decouvrir la cause et la nature d'accidents tres graves, developpes en mer, abord d'un bdtiment charge de poadrette (1821). The rest of the crew was ill. 91. "The whirlpool of their own transpiration" could not "get lost in the air," wrote Duhamel-Dumonceau, Moyens de conseruer la sante, 30. 92. Hales, Description 0/Ventilators, 38-39. 93. For example, the vicomte de Morogues, calculating the weight of vapors transpired or exhaled in a thirty-cannon frigate, concluded that the volume of foul exhalations equaled almost five cubic feet ofwater; Duhamel-Dumonceau, Moyens de conserver la sante, 44. 94. Macquer, Lavoisier, Fourcroy, and Vicq d'Azyrwere foremost among its members. 95. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 8:1. 96. Howard, State 0/Prisons, 214. 97· Casanova, Memoires, 547 and 588. 98. Senancour,Obermann, 1:83. . 247 NOTES TO PAGES 50-53 99. Libretto of Fidelia by Beethoven, translated and adapted from ].-N. Bouilly; the prisoners are authorized by Rocco to take the air for a second. 100. Jules Michelet, Histoire de France, 17 vols. (1833-67),13:317-318. 101. Howard, State of Prisons, 6-7. 102. Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, quoted in Pringle, Observations, 345. 103. Howard, State of Prisons, 9. 104. Ibid. 105. Pringle, Observations, 347-348. 106. Fodere, Traits de medecine legale, 5:3 I I. 107. The incident is cited over and over again. See, for example, Dr. Jean-Baptiste Banau and Francois Turben, Memoire sur les epidemies du Languedoc (1786), 12. 108. See Chapter 2, p. 24. 109. For this period it is anachronistic to distinguish between prison and hospital; at the end of the eighteenth century, however, the distinction was beginning to be somewhat justified. I 10. That "horrible mixture of putrescent infection" was the cemetery of the poor, wrote Leopold de Gennete: "breath is infected, wounds putrefy, sweat smells of corpses"; Purification de l'air croupissant dans les hapitaux, les prisons, et les vaisseaux de mer . . . (1767), 10. I I I. It is noteworthy that references to smells become fewer when he is dealing with English establishments. I 12. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 8:7 and 8. 113. Jacques-Rene Tenon, Memoires sur les hapitaux de Paris (1788). 114. Michel Foucault, in M. Foucault, F. Beguin, B. Fortier, A. Thalamsy, and B. Barret-Kriegel, Les Machines aguerir, aux origines de l'hOpital moderne (Paris, 1979). I I 5. Tenon, Memoires sur les hOpitaux, 208. 116. Ibid., p. 223. 117. Ibid.,p. 238. I 18. Even before barracks became very numerous, the general staff attributed the great epidemics that ravaged the French army in 1743 to overcrowding and the stagnation of the air; Andre Corvisier, L'Armeefrancaise du XVIIe siecle au ministere de Choiseul. Le soldat, vol. 2 (Paris, 1964), 672. 119. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 7:309. He condemned balls for this reason. 120. Senancour, Oberman», 2:48. 121. Ibid., p. 191. 122. Edna Hindie Lemay, "La Vie parisienne des deputes de 89," L'Histoire, 44 (1982), 104. 123. Favre, La Mort dans la litterature, 252, and, on Voltaire's involvement in the debate, 259. 124. Aries, L'Homme decant la mort, 474-475. 125. He even nursed a plan to write a history of odors, collecting "everything scattered in the works of writers on this subject"; De morbis artificum, 199· 126. Ibid., p. 513. 127. Ibid., p. 336. The fear of emanations from laundries persisted for a long time; under the July Monarchy, when the new requirements of cleanliness were spreading in Paris, the vapors of washing gave rise to numerous complaints to the Conseil de Salubrite. NOTES TO PAGES 54-60 128. Ibid., pp. 152-153. 129. With the exception of the Jews, however (see Chapter 9, p. 145); but the way in which this belief took root in the religious history of the West is familiar. 130. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 1:137-138. On the same subject, see 126-130. 13 I. Francoise Boudon, "La Salubrite du grenier de l'abondance ala fin du siecle," XVIII'Sieele, 9 (1977),171-180. 132. See Fortier, "La Politique de l'espace parisien." 133. Boudon, "La Salubrite," 176. 134. Jurine measured samples of "the air from the beds"; "Mernoire," 7 I ff. For the scale of unhealthy air in "inhabited apartments," see 90-9 I . 4. Redefining the Intolerable 1. Antoine Tournon, Moyen de rendre parfaitementpropres les rues de Paris (1789), 60. 2. Daniel Roche, Le Siecle des Lumieres en province: Academies et academiciens prooinciaux, vol. I (Paris, 1978), 378. 3. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 1:222. 4. Chauvet, Essai sur la proprete, 18. 5. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 1:267. 6. Favre, La Mort dans la litterature, 40. 7. See Madeleine Foisil, "Les Attitudes devant la mort au XVIII' siecle: Sepultures er suppressions de sepultures dans le cimetiere parisien des SaintsInnocents," Revue Historique, April-June 1974, p. 322. 8. Fortier, "La Politique de l'espace parisien," 34. 9. Young, Travels in France, 39· 10. Ibid., p. 33. 11. Ibid., pp. 160-161. 12. See Jean Delumeau, La Peur en Occident (Paris, 1978), 129 ff. 13. Menuret, Essai sur l'action de l'air, 51. 14. Foisil, "Les Attitudes devant la mort," 3 I I. 15. Cadet de Vaux, Memoire bistorique, drew up the chronology of these complaints. 16. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 8:340; the italics are mine. 17. Ibid., p. 341. 18. The ordinance of 1726 had already prohibited the first from injuring the second. 19. Laborie, Cadet the younger, and Parmentier, Observations sur les fosses, 105. 20. Geraud, Essai sur la suppression des fosses, 43. 2 I. This indignation, though, persisted for more than half a century without any result. 22. Thouret, Rapport sur la ooirie, 4. 23. Ronesse, Vues sur la proprete, 28. 24. Edmond Huot de Goncourt and Jules Huot de Goncourt, La Femme au XVIII' siecle (1862), 368. 25. Louis Damours, Memoire sur la necessite etles moyens d'eloigner du milieu de Paris, les tueries de bestiaux et les fonderies de suif (17 87), 9. 26. Boudon, "La Salubrite," 172. Tournon's evidence confirms this point. . 249 NOTES TO PAGES 60-63 27. Geraud, Essai sur la suppression des fosses, 49 and 41. 28. Emphasized particularly by Maurice Agulhon in the political field. 29. Guillerme, "Le Malsain," 65. 30. Pierre Chaunu, quoted in Foisil, "Les Attitudes devant la mort," 323. It is impossible to measure the change objectively; the historian is totally dependent on necessarily subjective witnesses. 3 I. See Fortier, "La Politique de l'espace parisien," 19, referring to an article in the journal de Paris,July 25, 1781. 32. Laporte, Histoire de la merde, 60. 33. Ibid., p. 18. 34. Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et antbropologie (Paris, 1980), emphasizes the role of Kant and even more of Fichte. 35. Fortier, "La Politique de l'espace parisien," 41. 36. Menuret, Essai sur l'action de l'air, 5 I. 37. In 1835 Mrs. Trollope (Paris and the Parisiansin I835, 2 vols. [1836J), choked by the stench of the Continent, tried to understand the sensory revolution taking place; it seemed to her, probably quite rightly, that its progress was faster in England. Her premonitory analysis partly supported the theories formulated earlier. The "improvement in English delicacy has been gradual, and in very just proportion to the increase of her wealth, and the fastidious keeping out of sight of everything that can in any way annoy the senses" (1:229-230). "This withdrawing from the perception of the senses everything that can annoy them-this lulling of the spirit by the absence of whatever might awaken it to a sensation of pain,-is probably the last point to which the ingenuity of man can reach in its efforts to embellish existence" (1:233). But perhaps this excessive refinement would hurl England into the gulf where civilizations perish. The British lady therefore minimized the medical goal, which would necessitate allusion to bodily functions, and stressed the desire for delicacy, the supreme but dangerous caress of the soul. In her opinion, the purification of the language did not precede the purification of space but resulted from it. 38. In the eighteenth century, "odors" designated perfumes. 39. Pierre-Joseph Buc'hoz, Toilette deflore a l'usage des dames (1771),192. 40. "Des odeurs," cited earlier, and "De l'osmologie, ou histoire naturelle des odeurs," Bulletin de Pbarmacie, 4 (May 1812), 193-228. 4 I. "Observations sur les parties volatiles et odorantes des medicaments tires des substances vegetates et animales: Extraites d'un mernoire de feu M. Lorry, par M. Halle," Histoire et Memoires de la Societe Royale de Medecine, 7 (1784-85), 306-318. 42. Nicolas Lemery, Pbarmacopee unioerselle, 892. 43. Banau and Turben, Memoire, 90. 44. Ramazzini, De morbis artificum, 198. 45. Lemery, Pbarmacopee unioerselie, 896 and 914. 46. A very old belief was involved here; see Delumeau, La Peur en Occident, 114. 47. Nicolas Blegny, Secrets concernant la beaute et la sante . . . recaeillis par M. Daqui», 2 vols. (Paris, 1688-89), especially 2:696. 48. See Francoise Hildesheimer, "La Protection sanitaire des cotes francaises au 250 • NOTES TO PAGES 63-65 XVIIIe siecle," Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaire, 27 (July-September 1980),443-467. In the Levant, health procedures combined open air, "perfume," and isolation. 49. See E. H. Ackerknecht, "Anticontagionism between I 821 and 1867," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1948, pp. 562-593· 50. Pringle, "Experiments," 528-534. 51. Lind, Essay on the Health of Seamen, 102. 52. Boissieu, Dissertations sur les antiseptiques, 67. 53. Bordenave, ibid., pp. 190 ff. 54. The correlation established between the balsamic and the salubrious, the malodorous and the insalubrious, always remained fragile. Scientific theories lost their coherence in practice. They fitted in with one another, amalgamated, or overlapped like the tiles of a roof. Becher was convinced of the beneficial properties of foul-smelling excrement, and, well before Ingenhousz delivered a valid analysis of photosynthesis, doctors had denounced the noxious effect of certain balsamic plants. 55. Goncourt and Goncourt recalled that during the Regency people called the service celebrated before dinner in the chapel of Saint-Esprit "musked mass"; La Femme au XVIIIe siecle, 395. 56. Pere Jean-Pierre Papon, De la peste ou epoques memorables de ce lUau et les moyens de s'en preserver, 2 vols. (Paris, year VIII); 2:47. 57. Buc'hoz, Toilette deflare, 7· 58. Lemery, Pbarmacopee uniuerselle, 892. He advised particularly that a balm composed of musk, ambergris, civet, and storax that "resisted bad air by its strong odor" be provided "so that one might be able to smell it often." 59. According to Baumes's evidence, Memoire, 224. The traveler who had crossed a swampy region, arriving at the hostelry in the evening, would burn sulfur in his room, imbibe infusions of odoriferous herbs, smoke tobacco "or any other aromatic substance," and make every effort not to swallow his saliva (p. 226). 60. Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Traite des moyens dedesinfecter l'air (18o I), 149; however, he expressed doubt about the efficacy of the practice. 61. Baumes, Memoire, 224. 62. Ramazzini, De morbis artificum, 209. 63. Commentary on ibid. in Essai sur les maladies des artisans traduit du latin de Ramazzini avec les notes et des additions par M. de Fourcroy (1777), 332. 64. Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, Rapport sur Ie carage des egouts Amelot, de la Roquette, Saint-Martin etautres, reprinted in Hygiene publiqi«, I :364; the workers first used sachets and then bottles that emitted odors of chlorine. 65. Duhamel-Dumonceau, Moyens de conserver la sante, 132 ff. 66. According to joseph-Marie-Francois Delassone senior and Claude-Melchior Cornette, "Mernoire sur les alterations que l'air eprouve par les differentes substances que 1'0n emploie en fumigation ... ," Histoire et Memoires de la Societe Royale de Medecine, 8 (1786), 324. Information on these methods can also be found in Hales, Description of Ventilators, 46, and Halle, "Air," in Encycloptdie metbodique. Medecine (1787), 57 2-575. 67. Encyclopedie, s.v. "Parfumoir." • 2 5 I NOTES TO PAGES 65-68 68. In I 796Jackson and Moser offered Londoners their fumigating lamp, intended especially for the combustion of the chemical products that composed the new range of disinfectants; Guyton de Morveau, Traite, 147. 69. The process is described by Ramel, De l'influence des marais, 301. 70. Papon, De la peste, 1:329. 7 I. See especially Fodere, Traitt de medecine legale, 6: I 59. 72. This is Tenon's opinion in Memoires sur les bspitau», 45 I. He claims to have known the elder Lind well. 73. Quoted in Duhamel-Dumonceau, Moyens de conserver la sante, 138. 74. Jean Antoine Chaptal, Elements de cbimie, vol. 3 (1803), I I I. 75. Felix Vicq d'Azyr, Instruction sur la maniere de desinfecter une paroisse (1775), 7-8. 76. "The immense storerooms full of this plant and other drugs were a powerful obstacle to the invasion"; Menuret, Essai sur l'action de l'air, 60. 77. Histoire et Memoires de la Societe Royale de Medecine, 3 (1782), 44, quoted in Baumes, Memoire, 164. Which justified the hymn to smoke: "the good quality of the air in the big cities is partly due to its services" (p. 163). 78. "It is important that limekilns, glassworks, soapworks, brandy or oil of vitriol distilleries be erected in these unhealthy districts, according to area and circumstances; these establishments would be doubly useful, since they would serve to correct the air and provide the inhabitants ... with work"; Baumes, Memoire, 165. More optimistic than a number of his contemporaries, Baumes added: "Moreover, the combustion of coal in simply constructed ovens would combine the advantage of avoiding wood consumption ... with the advantage of spreading with a great deal of smoke sulfurous emanations, which have an undisputed purifying property." 79. See Blegny, Secrets, 2:167, "Parfum pour la guerison de la verole." 80. For examples see Jaucourt, "Muse" 8 I. Quoted in ibid. 82. Virey, "Des odeurs," 174, and Hartley, Explication physique des sens, 331. 83. See de Seze, Recherches pbysiologiques, 159. The author does not share Buffon's views, 84. Virey, "Des odeurs,' 254· 85. See Paul Dorveaux, Histoire de l'eau de la Reine de Hongrie (Paris, 1921), 6. Blegny, Secrets, I :684, listed the many virtues of Eau de la Reine de Hongrie and pointed out that "many people like its strong odor and sniffit incessantly." 86. Lorry, "Observations sur les parties volatiles," 318. 87. Fourcroy, Essay de Ramazzini, 128. 88. Ibid., p. 22 I. 89. Virey, "De l'osmologie," 206. Fiery temperaments in particular should refrain from voluptuous smells, which Virey thought caused them to exhale fetid odors, thus paralleling the issue of semen. Foul odors, when powerful, could exert the same noxious effects. "I have several times observed," Ramazzini remarked, "women who live near these [candlemakers'} stalls complain of hysterical passions because of the bad odor"; De morbis artificum, 180-181. For that reason, he warned men of letters against overwork at night. In De morbis ab immunditiis Platner, a Leipzig doctor, cataloged the risks incurred from breathing disgusting odors. 25 2 • NOTES TO PAGES 68-7 I 90. For examples see Boissier de Sauvages, Dissertation, 56, and above all Cloquet, Ospbresiologie, 80-98, who based himself particularly on Thomas Cappelini, Memoire sur l'influence des odeurs, as well as on Triller's observations. Tobacco itself, Cloquet stated (p. 352), concealed deadly effects. Heavy smokers ceased to be able to smell; the drug slowly destroyed their olfactory nerves, as was proved by dissections of smokers' heads. 91. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 6:47: "A guard was kept seated near the door and sniffed everyone who arrived. She repeated incessantly: 'Do you have any odors?' " 92. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 59. 93. Virey, "De l'osmologie," 2 16. 94. This was a very old quarrel. Plato in the Republic heaped anathema on perfumes that encouraged indolence and pleasures. In ancient Greece the use of aromatics was a characteristic of the courtesan, "seductive illusion of a life all in perfumes." The more limited the part played by perfume in sexual intercourse, the greater its legitimacy seemed (Jean-Pierre Vernant, Preface to Detienne, Les [ardins d'Adonis, xiii and xxxvi). It is true that the animal substances used in eighteenth-century France were not known in antiquity; far from constituting a putrid threat, the ancient aromatic, associated with ideas of heat and dryness and formed close to the celestial fire, symbolized the imputrescible. For the denunciation of luxury see Abbe Francois Andre Adrien Pluquet, Traite pbilosopbique et politique sur le luxe, 2 vols. (1786). 95. Jacquin, De la sante, 290 ff. 96. Luigi Antonio Caraccioli, La foaissance de soi-mime (1759), 333· 97. See Georges Vigarello, Le Corps redresse (Paris, 1978), 87 ff. 98. See Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (London, 1924), 154 (rst ed. 1899). 99. De Gennete, Purification, 1 I. 100. Vicq d'Azyr, Instruction, 8. 101. Jacquin, De la sante, 82. 102. Guyton de Morveau, Traits, 93. 103. The numerous experiments conducted by Delassone senior and Cornette ("Memoire") proved beyond doubt that fumigation with aromatic substances did nothing but mephitize the bell jar. The researchers did not know that this phenomenon resulted from combustion and that it was not sufficient grounds for challenging the therapeutic value of the substances they analyzed. 104. Quoted in Guyton de Morveau, Traite, 138 and 139. 105. See Fourcroy, "Air atmospherique," in Encyclopedie methodique. Medecine (1787), 577· 106. Jean-Noel Halle et al., Codex des medicaments ou pharmacopee francaise (1818). 5. The New Calculus 0/Olfactory Pleasure I. For example, Jacquin, De la sante, 283: "Cleanliness is a concern to avoid everything that can revolt the delicacy of the senses; it is one of the principal virtues of society." On the evolution of Lasallean courtesy in the schools, see Roger Chartier, Dominique julia, and Marie-Madeleine Compere, L'Education en France du XVI"au XVIII"sieele (Paris, 1976), 143-144. . 253 NOTES TO PAGES 7 1-73 2. Platner's ideas are expounded in Baumes, Memoire, 189. An analogous theory is expounded in Moheau (Antoine Auger, baron of Montyon), Recherches et considerations sur la population de la France (177 8), 109. 3. Quoted in Baumes, Memoire, 191. 4. Halle, Recherches sur la nature d« miphitisme, I I I. 5. See Lion Murard and Patrick Zylberman, "Sanitas sanitatum. Equipernenr sanitaire et hygiene sociale" (Centre d'Etudes de Recherches et de Formation Institutionelles, 1981),275-280; see also Jean-Maurice Biziere, "Before and After: Essai de psycho-histoire," Revued'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 27 (April-June 1980), 177-207. 6. Daniel Roche's Le Peuple de Paris (Paris, 1981) makes some qualification necessary; inventories taken after death revealed a not inconsiderable number of flagons and basins in certain plebeian interiors, notably within groups in contact with the aristocracy (p. 122). 7. See Bruno Fortier, "La Maitrise de l'eau," XVIIIe siecle, 9 (1977), 193-201. 8. See especially Ronesse, Vuessur la proprete, 9 I. He wrote in 1782: "The water that comes from houses is infinitely more abundant than it was fifteen years ago: this results from the very frequent use of baths, which doctors are today prescribing for many more diseases than they did in former times, and from the taste that the public has acquired for this practice; with the result that there are baths in all newly built houses and that when an individual in comfortable circumstances wants to rent an apartment he regards a bathroom as one of the most essential rooms" (my italics). The custom grew up offitting pumps to almost every well. As a result, domestic servants in big houses stopped being economical with water; they used it for washing courtyards, kitchens, and even carriages. 9. Recherches et considerations, 110. 10. On the establishment of discipline at school see Chartier, Julia, and Compere, L'Education, especially 145. II. M. Dejean (Antoine de Hornor), Traite des odeurs (1764),147. 12. Chartier, Julia, and Compere, L'Education, 144. 13. Mauzi, L'ldee du bonbeur, 427. 14. Dejean, Traite des odeurs, 457. 15. S.v. "Parfum." The same opinion is expressed in jaucourt, "Muse" 16. Le Cat, Traitt des sensations, 256. Musk gave vapors, fainting fits, to all ladies and some men. 17. De jean, T raite des odeurs, 9 I. 18. Indeed, the use of musk persists today, although its function has changed; it now tends to be reserved for men. Animal perfume has become a symbol of virility but it has lost all reference to rut. 19. Ellis, Sexual Selection in Men, 99 and 9 I. When Ellis was writing, at the beginning of the twentieth century, experts had long emphasized the impact of that odor on sexual behavior. In the early nineteenth century Esquirol reported several cases of women driven mad by inhaling musk during lactation. Around 1880 Fere confirmed that musk was more reminiscent of sexual secretions than was any other perfume. 20. Iwan Block Hagen, Die Sexuelle Ospbrtsiologie (Leipzig, 1901), and Ellis, Sexual Selection in Man, contain excellent bibliographies on the subject. 254 . NOTES TO PAGES 74-76 2 I. Ellis, Sexual Selection in Man, 99. 22. Freud wrote: "The fateful process of civilization would thus have set in with man's adoption of an erect posture. From that point the chain of events would have proceeded through the devaluation of olfactory stimuli and the isolation of the menstrual period to the time when visual stimuli were paramount and the genitals became visible, and thence to the continuity of sexual excitation, the founding of the family and so to the threshold of human civilization"; "Civilization and Its Discontents," in The Standard Edition 0/ the Complete Psychological Works 0/Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, vol. 21 (London, 1975), 99-100, no. 1. 23. Hartley, Explication physique des sens, 332. 24. Dejean, Traite des odeurs, 8 ff. This trend must be related to the development that affected the spectrum of colors in clothing fashions; soft tints prevailed at the same time that jonquil triumphed over musk. See Roche, Le Peuple de Paris, 177. 25. Already used a great deal in the seventeenth century; see Blegny, Secrets, 1:687. 26. Malouin, Chimie medicinale, 275. 27. See Dr. Louis Reutter de Rosemont, Histoire de la pharmacie atravers les ages, vol. 2 (Paris, 1931), 438. 28. Ibid., p. 441. As early as 1740 the Peruvian heliotrope was introduced to France by Joseph de Jussieu. 29. Casanova, Memoires, 255. 30. This was notably Fourcroy's opinion, Essai de Ramazzini, 186. 31. See Blegny, Secrets, 1:697, and Dejean, Traite des odeurs, 303. 32. Restif de La Bretonne, L'Anti-]ustine, passim. 33. For example, he washed his Venetian nun's "superb neck with rose water"; Memoires, 448. 34. As in the novel by Charles Rochette de La Morliere, Angola, bistoire indienne (1746) (2 vols. in I). 35. Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Paris, 1971). Sade's scenario for the body involved sight; flowers and excrement figured in it only to mark out the path to degradation. "Written down, excrement does not smell; Sade can drench his opponents in it, we receive no effluvia from it, only the abstract sign ofsomething disagreeable" (p. 140). Sade's writing does, however, contain some references to breath, to the odor of sperm, and, of course, to sulfur (as in la Durand's sorcery in]uliette). 36. Dejean, Traite des odeurs, 423. 37. Ibid., p. 431. 38. Buc'hoz, Toilette de flore, part 1. See also Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 6:153. 39. Mme. Campan, Memoires sur la vie de Marie-Antoinette, reine de France et de Navarre (1849), 97, notes the proliferation offlowers in hair styles at the court of Louis XVI. 40. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 2: 158. 41. Casanova, Memoires, 295. He has the same type of reaction on p. 176. 42. Ibid., p. 185. 43· Ibid., p. 139· 44. Alexandre Dumas, "Les Parfums," Le (Petit) Moniteur Universel du Soir, October 16, 1868. . 255 NOTES TO PAGES 76-79 45. Treatise on perfumes, Le Parfumeur royal (1761), 83. 46. Dejean, Traite des odeurs, 4. 47. Casanova, Memoires, 427. 48. For example, letters XIV (June 1783) and XXIII (March 8, 1784), Lettres cboisies du marquis de Sade (Paris, 1963), 169 and 222. 49· Casanova, Memoires, 435. 50. Le Par/umeur royal, 150. 5 I. Dejean, Traite des odeurs, 447. 52. There is considerable evidence on this subject: Bncyclopedie, s.v. "Parfum"; Buc'hoz, Toilette deflore, 137; Le Par/umeur royal, 7. 53. Le Parfumeur royal, 152-153. 54. Ibid., p. 158. 55. Buc'hoz, Toilette deflore, 67. 56. Ibid., p. 233. 57. Le Parfumeur royal, 158, 159, 148-149, 202. 58. Evariste-Desire Desforges de Parny, "Le Cabinet de toilette," in Oeuvres de Parny, elegies et poesies dioerses, 3 vols. (1861), 3:78-79; Rousseau, Emile, 201. Godard d'Aucourt, Tbemidore (Paris, 1980), 226 (rst ed. 1745), suggested that the use of subtle and delicately allusive perfumes was a favorite weapon of the "devout" female libertine. The delicate scents of Mme. de Dorigny's toilette prepared the way for Thernidore's downfall. 59. Rene-Louis Girardin, De la composition des paysages (1777), 59. 60. Senancour, Obermann, 1:7 I. 61. Ibid. 62. Louis-Francois Ramond de Carbonnieres, Observations faites dans les Pyrenees pour seruirde suite it des observations sur les Alpes (1789), 346. 63. Favre, La Mort dans la litteratare, 25 I. 64. jurine, "Mernoire," 95. 65. Dagognet, "La Cure d'air," gives a very subtle analysis of this "social hypnotherapy," this "emotional hibernation" (p. 85), this "delirium formed around the vivifying air of the mountains" (p. 76). To explain this desire to tap the energy of the peaks, he refers to jung's themes of aerial resurrection and salvific aspiration. The fashion for staying in the mountains must be linked to the more general fashion for "ascensional" ventures and fantasies. 66. See, for example, Tourtelle, Elements d'bygiine, 27 I. 67. Geraud, Essai sur la suppression des losses, 95. 68. Horace Benedict de Saussure, Voyages dansles Alpes, 4 vols. (Neuchatel, 1779- 96), I: 5 18: "The air in mountains rising over five or six hundred fathoms above sea level, is vitiated by other exhalations." 69. Senancour,Obermann, 1:54; Ramond, Observations dans les Pyrenees, 348. 70. Senancour, Obermann, 2: 174: Saussure, Voyages dans les Alpes, 2:480 ff. 7 I. Girardin, De la composition des paysages, 128. 72. Claude-Henri Watelet, Essai sur les jardins (1764), 34. 73. This is a chapter title in Girardin, De la composition des paysages. 74. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 10:72: "Whoever does not like the odor of newmown hay does not know the pleasantest of perfumes"; Ramond, Observations dans les Pyrenees, 88; Loaisel de Treogate, Dolbreuse (1783), 81. 75. Senancour,Obermann, 1:23. Beatrice Le Gall, L'lmaginaire chez Senancour, 2 NOTES TO PAGES 79-82 vols. (Paris, 1966), 1:43, studies this sensation. The odor of mown hay is one of the symbols of early adolescence. 76. Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis, "La Geometrie du sentiment et le paysage therapeutique,' XVIIleSiecle, 9 (1977), 74. 77· Girardin, De la composition des paysages, 123. 78. C. C. 1. Hirschfeld, Tbeorie de l'art des jardins, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1779-85), I: 185 and 186. 79. Thomas Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening (London, 177 I); JeanMarie Morel, Tbeorie des jardins (1776). 80. Hirschfeld, Tbiorie de l'art des jardins, 1:185. 81. Girardin, De la composition des paysages, 52. 82. Horace Walpole, Essay on Modern Gardening (London, 1785). Hirschfeld, Tbeorie del'art des jardins, 2:94, writes: "It is in places where man rests, where he gives himself up to his thoughts and his imagination, where he prefers feeling to reflection, that the families of odoriferous flowers should spread their sweet, balsamic, refreshing perfumes and thus enhance the sensation of the delights of creation by satisfying a new sense. Let places intended for rest and sleep, let studies, dining rooms, baths be surrounded by sweet odors of violet, lily, stock ... cloves ... white narcissus, white lily, hyacinth, carnation, mignonette or Egyptian reseda ... jonquil, etc. Enjoyment of these perfumes in an indescribable way spreads a sort of re-creation and calm within man and pours peace and a feeling of well-being into his soul, which gently warms him." 83. John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 5,294· Books 4 and 5 of Paradise Lost praise the natural perfumes offlowers and meadows. Milton in his blindness appealed first to his reader to imagine scents: fragrant bushes, roses, jasmine, and violets perfume the bower and, more accurately, the secret retreat that shelters the loves of Adam and Eve. 84. Girardin, De la composition des paysages, 48. 85. Ibid., p. 132. 86. Hirschfeld, Tbeorie de l'art des jardins, 1:51. 87. Watelet, Essai sur les jardins, 34. 88. Ellis, Sexual Selection in Man, 102. Even the chastest of women, when smelling a flower deeply, closed her eyes and, "if very sensitive, trembles all over, presenting an intimate picture which otherwise she never shows, except perhaps to her lover." Ellis noted that some nineteenth-century moralists had condemned flowers solely because of this effect. 89. Loaisel de Treogate, Dolbreuse, 174 and 80. 90. Andrea de Nerciat, Felicia ou mes fredaines (Paris, 1979), 196 (tst ed. 1776). For another example see Rochette de la Morliere, Angola, 2: 16. 91. Hirschfeld, Tbeorie de l'art des jardins, 5:66. 92. Ibid., p. 19. 93. Ramond, Observations dans les Pyrenees, 165. 94. See Jean Starobinski, La Transparence et l'obstacle (Paris, 197 I), 196. 95. Ramond, Observations dansles Pyrenees, 88. This example has often been quoted: Maine de Biran mentions it in his Journal (vol. I [Neuchatel, I954}, 151). Mountainsides were particularly favorable for the manifestation of the mernorative sign; because of their calm, their silence, and the fatherly proximity • 257 NOTES TO PAGES 82-90 of the sun, they summoned up the image of the mother and were therefore propitious to the reliving of childhood. All these themes were expanded by Michelet (see Dagognet, "La Cure d'air," 81 ff.). 96. Senancour, Obermann, 2:58. 97. Castan, communication to a colloquium on the history of prisons, held at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales December 19, 198o; Mandrou, Introduction a!a France moderne, 70 ff. 98. jean-Francois Saint-Lambert, Les Saisons (1769), 35, quoted in Mauzi, L'Idee du bonbeur, 320. 99. Senancour, Obermann, 2:268. 100. Mauzi, L'Idee du bonbeur, 114. 101. Rousseau felt the botanist's attraction for flowers. He was more interested in admiring their arrangement than in smelling them, more in "resting from ecstasy than nourishing it"; Le Gall, L'lmaginaire, 1 :33 1. The herbarium he made himselfwas primarily a "reminder"; it was through sight that he expected to conjure up the immediate presence ofmemory; Starobinski, La Transparence et l'obstacle, 197. 102. See p. 140. 103. Caraccioli, La fouissance, quoted in Mauzi, L'Idee du bonbeur, 195. 104. Franklin, La Vie prioee, 7:31. 105. Fodere, Traite de medecine legale, 6:526. 106. Senancour, Obermann, 2:269 and 268. 107. Mauzi, L'Idee du bonbeur, 317. 108. Quoted in ibid., p. 319. 109. Senancour, Obermann, 1: 113. 110. Ibid., pp. 244-245. 1 I I. Marcel Raymond, Senancour, sensations et revelations (Paris, 1965), analyzed this search for happiness through sensation in Senancour's work. He saw in the special sensitivity to odor the true appreciation of the first stirring of the heart and compared this feeling with the sense of emergence in N ovalis. Le Gall, L'Imaginaire, demonstrated that violets and jonquils conjured up for Senancour two experiences of love. She added (I :27 I): "He loves violets because sometimes when they are hidden beneath the grass they are nothing but a fragrance." In fact Senancour wrote in his Reveries (Paris, 1939), 1:100- 101: "The feeling that emanates from them is offered to us and immediately refused, we seek it in vain, a light breeze has carried its perfume away, it brings it back and carries it away again, and its invisible caprice has created our pleasure." Senancour was, like Friedrich Hoffmann (Der goldener Topf) , fascinated by the search for sensory correspondences and inspired by the research of Rev. Pere Castel; he too dreamed of a keyboard of odors well before Huysmans's Des Esseintes (Le Gall, L'lmaginaire, 1:331). 112. Note, though, that Obermann did not appear until 1803. 6. T he Tactics of Deodorization 1. Jean-Claude Perrot, Genese d'une ville moderne. Caen au XVIIIe siecle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1975), 1:9; 2:945, 950; and 1:10. 2. See Gilles Lapouge, "Utopie et hygiene," Cadmos, 9 (1980), 120. NOTES TO PAGES 90-94 3. This was the opinion of Dr. Lecadre, "Le Havre considere sous le rapport hygienique," Annales d'Hygiene Publique et de Medecine Legale, 42 (1849), 255. 4. See Ramel, De l'infiuence des marais, 25 I. 5. Bertholon, De la salubrit«, 69. Anxiety is the predominant tone of all writers on the subject. 6. Boudon, "La Salubrite," 178. 7. The paving alongside the convent of the Jacobins was replaced four times in forty years; ].-c. Perrot, Genese d'une ville moderne, 95. 8. For example, Baumes, Memoire, 179. Howard, State of Prisons, 23. 9. For example, the police ordinance of November 8, 1729. 10. Cited in Chevreul, "Mernoire," 30. 11. Fodere, Traite de medecine legale, 6:256. 12. The wish to be fortified against the threat of infection was connected with the same desire. Scientists imaginatively suggested the use of some complicated machines. Fourcroy, for example, recommended that starchworkers "put a sort of paper funnel round their necks, with its widest side toward their heads, in order to divert the course of the vapor that would otherwise strike their faces"; Essaisur Ramazzini, 3 I 3. Pharmacists suggested curious antirnephitic glazes. Banau and Turben (Memoire, 99) prepared for this purpose a concoction that could be used to smear frock coats. This was no aberrant case; Fodere (Traite de medecine legale, 6:112) recommended that his colleagues, patients' families, and neighbors also use glazed taffeta wrappers to cover clothes, boots, and hats. 13. Howard, State ofPrisons, 342. Roche, LePeuple deParis, 140, notes the increase in tapestry hangings in the houses of the masses; at the end of the century they embellished 84 percent of interiors. 14. See Chapter 7, pp. 123- 124. 15. Bertholon, De la salubrite, 97; Thouret, Rapportsur la voirie, 10. 16. Fortier, "La Politique de l'espace parisien," 59. 17. ].-c. Perrot, Genese d'une ville moderne, 12. 18. Favre, La Mort dans la littirature, 249. 19. Etudes de la nature (1784), 220-222, quoted in ibid., p. 250. 20. Jean-Noel Biraben, Les Hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays europeens et mediterraneens, 3 vols. (Paris, 1975),2:179· 21. Pierre Devon, Amiens, capitate prouinciale (Paris, 1967), 22. 22. Ibid., p. 27. 23. Detailed information can be found in Alphonse Chevallier, "Notice historique sur le nettoiernent de la ville de Paris," Annales d'HygienePubliqueetdeMidecine Legale, 42 (1849)· 24. Chauvet, Essaisur la proprete, 28. 25. Tournon, Moyen de rendre propres les rues, 16. 26. Bertholon, De la salubrite, 90; Chauvet, Essaisur la propreti, 34· 27. Lavoisier, Oeuvres, 3:496. 28. Geraud, Essaisur la suppression des fosses, 58-59· 29. Pierre Saddy, "Le Cycle des immondices," XVIIle Siecle, 9 (1977), 203-214; Arlette Farge, "L'Espace parisien au XVIIIe siecle d'apres les ordonnances de police," Ethnologie Francaise, n.s., 12 (April-June 1982), 119-125. 30. See Saddy, "Le Cycle des immondices," 206. • 259 NOTES TO PAGES 94-99 31. For an exhaustive account see Francois-joseph Liger, Fosses d'aisances, latrines, urinoirs et vidanges (1875), 342-384. 32. Ronesse, Vues sur la proprete, 31. 33. There is an excellent discussion of this subject in Favre, La Mort dans la litterature, 378 ff. 34. Changing the air, wrote Jean-Claude Perrot, "is not to assist the cure, it is positively to cure"; Genese d'une ville moderne, 2:890. 35. Hales, Description o/Ventilators, 69-76. 36. Geraud, Essai sur la suppression des losses, 128. 37. Francois Beguin, "Evolution de quelques strategies medico-spatiales," in Fortier, La Politique de l'espace parisien, 208. 38. On this subject see ibid., p. 228. 39. Samuel Sutton, An Historical Account0/a New Method for Extracting the foul air out 0/ships (London, 1749), 13-16. 40. Hales, Description 0/Ventilators, 17-23. 41. De Gennere, Purification, 21. 42. Sutton, New Method, 4. 43. Laborie, Cadet the younger, and Parmentier, Observations sur les losses, 26, 27, and 29. 44. Baumes, Memoire, 186. 45. Ingenhousz, Experiences sur les vegitaux, 162-163. 46. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 100. 47. Banau and Turben, Memoire, 53-57. 48. Baumes, Memoire, 162. 49. Monfalcon, Histoire des marais, 384; a remedy that was not without its risks, since Monfalcon also stated (p. 126) that swampy emanations incited girls and women to licentious ways. 50. See Tournon, Moyen de rendre propres les rues, 24. 51. Mme. Marc-Amande Gacon-Dufour wrote in 1825 that "every traveler [confined in a carriage] is in his own interest obliged to have a flask of vinegar"; Manuel du parfumeur, I I I. 52. Fortier, "La Politique de l'espace parisien," 60. 53. Navier, Sur les dangers des exhumations, 63. 54. Biraben, Les Hommes et la peste, 2:177· 55. Baumes, Memoire, 16 3. 56. Banau and Turben, Memoire, 68. 57. Guyton de Morveau, Traite, 7. 58. Banau and Turben, Memoire, 55 ff. and 78. 59. Fortier, "La Maitrise de l'eau." 60. Howard, State 0/Prisons, 264-266. 61. Biraben, Les Hommes et la peste, 2:170. 62. Francois Beguin, in Foucault et al., Les Machines aguerir, 40. 63. De Gennete, Purification, 24· 64. See Richard Etlin, "L'Air dans l'urbanisme des Lumieres," XVIIle Siecle, 9 (1977), 12 3-1 34 . 65. Just as many positive obsessions can be found throughout Howard's works. 66. Howard, State 0/Prisons, 22. 260 . NOTES TO PAGES 99-103 67. Baumes, Memoire, 184. 68. ].-c. Perrot, Genese d'une ville moderne, 2:686. 69. Ledoux cited in Ozouf, "L'Image de la ville." 70. Tenon, Memoires sur les hapitaux, 166. 7 1. See Etlin, "L'Air dans l'urbanisme," 132. 72. Jacquin, De la sante, 85 ff. 73. Geraud, Essai sur la suppression des losses, 128. 74. Baumes, Memoire, 184. 75. Edin, "L'Air dans l'urbanisme," 132. 76. Ozouf, "L'Image de la ville," 1279. Ozouf provides an excellent analysis of Ledoux's exceptional talent. 77. Maurice Garden, Lyon et les lyonnais au Xvlllrsiecle (Lyons, 1970), 12. 78. Fortier, "La Politique dans l'espace parisien," 41 ff. 79. Ibid., p. 9 2. 80. Louis-Rene Villerme, Des prisons telles qu'elles sont et telles qu'elles deuraient itre . . . par rapportal'bygiine, ala morale et al'economie politiase (I820), 39 ff. 81. Vigarello, Le Corps redresse, 123. 82. Jean-Louis Flandrin, Familles, parenti, maison, sexualite dans l'ancienne societe (Paris, 1976),97-101. 83. Philippe Perrot, Les Dessus et les dessous de la bourgeoisie (Paris, 1981), 288. Roche, Le Peuple de Paris, 133, points out that at the end of the eighteenth century everyone in the lodginghouse population had his own bed. 84. Tenon, Memoires sur les hapitaux, 165 ff. 85. See Michel Foucault, Naissance de la clinique (Paris, 1963), 38 ff., and Favre, La Mort dans la litterature, 246 ff. 86. Aries, L'Homme devant la mort, 484 ff. 87. On the norms suggested by Maret (which he approved of) see Vicq d'Azyr, Essai sur les lieux, cxxix. 88. Thouret, Rapport sur les exhumations du cimetiere et de l'eglise des Saints-Innocents (1789). The transfer took place from December 1785 to October 1787. 89. On this quest see Halle, Recherches sur la nature du mepbitisme, 10. 90. Biraben, Les Hommes et la peste, 2:176. 91. Navier, Sur les dangers des exhumations, 54. 92. Biraben, Les Hommes et la peste, 1:235. 93. Navier, Sur les dangers des exhumations, 52. 94. Lavoisier, Oeuvres, 3:477. This prescription was dictated by his theory of combustion. Note that aromatic fumigations combined the beneficial effects of fire with that of "perfumes." 95. Duhamel-Dumonceau, Moyens de conserver la sante, 119. 96. Thouret, Rapport sur la uoirie, 7-8. 97. Apart, of course, from the virtues attributed to holy water, which was sprinkled on the ships of the Russian fleet struck by epidemic in 1795; Guyton de Morveau, Traite, 45. 98. Banau and Turben, Memoire, 64. 99. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 1 I. 100. "The cieling (sic] and walls of every ward and room should be well scraped; and then washed with the best stone-lime taken hot from the kiln, and slaked NOTES TO PAGES 104-107 in boiling water and size, and used during the strong effervescence; at least twice a year ... Each ward and room should be swept, and washed every day, by the respective inhabitants; and sometimes with hot vinegar"; Howard, State of Prisons, 30. Howard then quotes from Lind's recommendations for fumigating ships, advising use of the same methods for prisons. After an infection, the premises should be fumigated with charcoal and brimstone every day for two weeks. After the final fumigation, "every thing ragged and dirty should be destroyed, as also the clothes and bedding of those who brought the infection ... the bedding of such as have died of the fever, and unless the infection has been very mild, the bedding ofsuch as have had the fever though recovered. The remaining clothes and bedding should be purified by being exposed twice a week to the steams of the brimstone and charcoal"; State of Prisons, 32. 101. Laborie, Cadet the younger, and Parmentier, Observations sur les fosses, 39. 102. Quoted in Thouret, Rapport sur la voirie, 14. 103. Navier, Sur les dangers des exhumations, 46. 104. Guyton de Morveau, Traite, 272. 105. Ibid., pp. 10-13. 106. Ibid., p. 13. 107. Vicq d'Azyr, Instruction, 7-8. ro8. Guyton de Morveau, Traite, 93. 109· Ibid., p. 94. 110. Dr. James Carmichael-Smith, Observations sur la fievre des prisons, sur les moyens de la preoenir . . . al'aidedes fumigations de gaz nitrique, et sur l'utiliti de ces fumigations pour la destruction des odeurs et des miasmes contagieux (18o I), 88. Cruickshank, like Guyton de Morveau, used fumigations ofoxygenated hydrochloric acid. I I I. See Marcel Spivak, "L'Hygiene des troupes a la fin de l'Ancien Regime," XVIIIeSiecle, 9 (1977), Il5- 12 2. I 12. For this observation I am grateful to Jean Chagniot, an expert on the history of the French Guards at the end of the ancien regime. I 13. Lind, Essay on the Health of Seamen; he was thinking primarily of the patients. 114. His strategy was summed up by Duhamel-Dumonceau, Moyens de conserver la sante, 73 ff. I I 5. Letter from John Haygarth, May 30, 1789, in Howard, Principal Lazarettos, app., p. 23. 116. Ibid. Identical concern can be noted on board the Adventure, under Captain Furneaux, Cook's companion; Captain Cook, Three Voyages round the World, ed. Lieutenant Charles R. Low (London, 1876), 3 I 3. I 17. In Foucault et al., Les Machines aguirir. 118. Boissieu, Dissertations sur les antiseptiques, 66. Il9. Halle, "Air des hopitaux," 575. 120. See the report by Delassone and Daubenton, June 20, 1787. 121. Etlin, "L'Air dans l'urbanisme," 132. 122. Halle, "Air des hopitaux,' 575. 123. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 37. 124. Saddy, "Le Cycle des immondices,' 209. NOTES TO PAGES 107-1 15 125. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 181, 182, 209. 126. Tenon, Memoires sur les hOpitaux, 434. 127. See Chapter 7, pp. 124-125. 128. Lavoisier, Oeuvres, 3:469. 129. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 218. 130. Title of the book by Genevieve Heller: Propre en ordre. Habitation et vie domestique 185cr-I930 (Paris, 1980). 131. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 202-205. 132. Lavoisier, Oeuvres, 3:474 ff. 7. Odors and the Physiology of the Social Order 1. On systems of visual perception see Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola. 2. Fourcroy and Berthollet referred to in Pierre Jean Robiquet, "Considerations sur l'arorne," Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 15 (1820), 28. 3. Locke had already suggested this theory; he adopted the Cartesian way of explaining the way in which the senses perceive the qualities of objects; Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 304-305. 4. On the spiritus rector theory, see Introduction, n. 14. 5. Lavoisier, "Mernoire sur les alterations qui arrivent al'air dans plusieurs circonstances ou se trouvent les hommes reunis en societe," Histoire et Memoires de la Societe Royale de Medecine, 8 (17 87), quoted in Felix Leblanc, Recherches sur la composition de l'air confine (1842), 4. 6. Forget, Medecine navale, 191. 7. Piorry, Des habitations, 85 and 91. 8. Leblanc, Recherches, 7. 9. C. Grassi, De la ventilation des navires (1857), 5. 10. See Louis Chevalier, Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses aParis pendant la premiere moitie du XIXe siecle (Paris, 1958), 168-182. 11. J-B. Huzard the younger, De l'enleoement des boues et des immondices de Paris (1826), urged the removal of the refuse dumps that were contaminating rue Chateau-Landon, rue de la Voirie, and the Montreuil, Fourneaux, and Enfer gates. 12. V. Moleon, Rapports generaux sur les travaux du Conseil de Salubrite, 2 vols. (Paris, 1828), I :265 (report for 1823). See also R.-H. Guerrand, "Petite Hiswire du quotidien. L'avenernent de la chasse d'eau," L'Histoire, 43 (1982), 97. Witnesses' obsession with the danger from excrement was an extension of the eighteenth-century complaint, except that analysis ofsmells was becoming still more prominent. Many works attest the strength of the repulsion. Dr. Claude Lachaise, Topograpbie medicale de Paris (1822), 139 describes the odors from the Montfaucon rubbish dump; Dr. Francois-Marc Moreau, Histoire statistique du cholera-morbus dans le quartier du faubourg Saint-Dents (1833), 40, describes the Saint-Laurent fairground before its purification in 1832: "In many places the ground is so covered with fecal matter that it is no longer visible." Dr. Felix Hatin, Essai medico-pbilosopbique sur les moyens d'ameliorer /'itat sanitaire de la classe indigente . . . (1832), probably best expresses the revulsion to the omnipresence of excrement, as in his description of the environs of Notre- NOTES TO PAGES I I 5-I 16 Dame (p. 3): "We civilized and refined people live amid an uncleanliness that is a constant reminder of the infirmities to which nature has condemned us from the cradle. Nothing is more shocking, in my opinion, than our great buildings edged with the residue of digestion." Mrs. Trollope, Paris and Parisians in I835, 1:113, claimed that "in a city as this, you are shocked and disgusted at every step you take, or at every gyration that the wheels of your chariot can make, by sights and smells that may not be described." Victor Considerant (see R.-H. Guerrand and Elsie Canfora-Argandona, La Repartition de la population. Les conditions de logement des classes ouurieres aParis au XIXesiecle [Paris, 1976}, 19-20) and Balzac (La Pille aux yeux d'or) also provide evidence. Of all the authors I consulted, only Antoine Caillot, Memoires pour seruiral'bistoire des moeurs et usages des francais, 2 vols. (1827), 1:303, congratulated himself on the decline in the fetidity of public space since the Consulate, and he referred to a very specific area: the gardens of the Palais-Royal. These were cleansed of their contaminating excrement at the end of the eighteenth century. On the excremental hell of Lille, see Pierrard, La Vie ouuriere, especially his description of cesspool clearers who used barrels stopped up with a few blades of corn. The work was performed by the small "tosser" or "bernatier" merchants, who went through the streets with their carts crying "Four sous a barrel!" (p. 54), then delivered their goods to Flemish buyers. In 1850 Lille still did not possess public urinals; "a few buckets placed along the walls took their place; they were emptied near a cistern situated near the town hall" (p. 53). On belated complaints about excrements at Nevers and La Charite-surLoire, see Guy Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien au XIXe siecle en Nivernais (Paris, 1977), 34· 13. See Chevalier, Classes laborieuses, 461-463. 14. See Alain Faure, "Classe malpropre, classe dangereuse?" L'Haleine des Faubourgs, Recherches, 29 (1977), 79- 102. 15. Moleon, Rapports generaux, 2 :46. This obsession with suburban contamination of the town center recurred at Lille in connection with the Sainte-Agnes rubbish dump (Pierrard, La Vie ouuriere, 53), where the peasants came and helped themselves. 16. This was an application of the principle of isolation, of separation, which inspired public health policy and particularly the medical code of March 8, 1822. See Blandine Barret-Kriegel, "Les Demeures de la rnisere," in Cornire, Politiques de l'babitat, 93. 17. Moleon, Rapports generaux, 2:75. 18. A.-A. Mille, "Rapport sur Ie mode d'assainissement des villes en Anglererre et en Ecosse," Annales d'Hygiene Publique et deMedecine Legale, zd ser., 4 (JulyOctober 1855), 210, 209. He also asserted (p. 210) that the value of manure must be "calculated according to the absence of odor." 19. See Parent-Duchatelet, Rapport sur les ameliorations, 371. 20. Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, Rapport sur les nouveaux procedes de MM. Salmon et Payen et Cie pour la dessication des chevaux morts . . . (1833), reprinted in Hygiene publique, 2:293. 2 I. Dr. Emile-Louis Bertherand, Memoire sur la vidange des latrines et des urinoirs publics (1858), 7. 264 . NOTES TO PAGES I 16-I 2 I 22. H. Sponi, De fa vidange au passe, au present et au famr (1856), 29. The calculation from the Journal de Cbimie Medicale is cited in Guerrand, "Petite Histoire du quotidien," 97. 23. Via his famous theory of the "circulus." 24. These concerns took root in the eighteenth century, when the manufacture of poudrette was established at Montfaucon. 25. Chevallier, "Notice historique," 318. 26. Pierre Pierrard has noted that during the Second Empire the old and infirm still accounted for half the manpower employed by rubbish contractors. 27· Chevallier, "Notice hisrorique," 307, 319, and 313; the italics are mine. 28. See Bertherand, Memoire, passim, already cited by Laporte, Histoire de fa merde. 29. Sponi, De la vidange, 26. 30. Laporte, Histoire de fa merde, 99 ff. 3I. On these fluctuations see Liger, Posses d'aisances, 87 ff. The author provides some information on the evolution of prices. 32. Moleon, Rapports generaux, 2:234 (report for 1835). Separating apparatus inspired a copious body of literature. 33. Pierrard, La Vie ouoriere, 49. 34. Gabriel Desert, Histoire de Caen (Paris, 1981), 199 and 228. 35. Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 34. 36. "Rapport d'Emile Trelat sur l'evacuation des vidanges hors des habitations," in De l'eoacuation des vidanges dans la ville de Paris (1880-82),29 (read January 25, 1882). 37. Gerard jacquemet, "Urbanisrne parisien: La bataille du rour-a-l'egour ala fin du XIX' siecle," Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporains, 26 (October-December 1979), 505-548. 38. Chevreul, "Mernoire," 42. 39. Hippolyte Marie-Davy, in De !'evacuation des uidanges, 67 ff. This content varied between 9 kilograms per cubic meter for material that was not mixed with water, collected from the premises of the masses, and 270 grams per cubic meter in the cesspool of the Grand Hotel. 40. Parenr-Duchatelet, fervent propagandist for the product, advised organizing demonstrations on the pavements of the city in order to prove its efficiency to the public; Rapport sur les ameliorations, 397. 41. Georges Knaebel, Les Problemes d'assainissement d'une oille du Tiers Monde: Pointe Noire (Thesis 3d cycle, October 1978), 249. 42. Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, Les Cbantiers d'equarrissage de fa ville de Paris envisages sous le rapport de l'bygiene publique (1832), 29, 100. 43. Lachaise, Topograpbie medicale de Paris, 139. 44. Moleon, Rapports generaux, I :89 (report for 1815). 45. See Parent-Duchatelet, Les Cbantiers, 28. 46. This was the view of ].-B. Monfalcon and A. Poliniere, who calculated the profits of this industry, Traite de fa salubrit« dans les grandes villes (1846), 220 ff. 47. See Moleon, Rapports generaux, 2:16 (report for 1827). 48. Ibid., 1:325 (report for 1825)· 49. Ibid., p. 286 (report for 1824). 50. Parent-Duchatelet, Rapport sur les nouveaux procedes, 295, and Projet ... d'un . 265 NOTES TO PAGES 121-124 rapport . . . sur la construction d'un clos centrald'equarrissage pour la villedeParis, reprinted in Hygiene publique, 2:310. 5I. Monfalcon and Poliniere, Traite de la salubrite, 224. 52. Alexandre Parenr-Duchateler, De l'infiuence et de l'assainissement des salles de dissection, reprinted in Hygiene publique, 2:22-24. 53. Jean Chretien, Les Odeurs de Paris (1881), 33. 54. Widely practiced by Western doctors. See Jacques Leonard, Les Medecins de l'Ouest au XIXesiede, vol. 3 (Paris, 1979), I I41. 55. Reutter de Rosemont, Histoire de la pbarmacie, 286. 56. Antoine-Germain Labarraque, Observations sur l'emploi des cblorures (1825), 5; text of Delavau's report reproduced ibid., p. 3. 57. Comment by Labarraque reported in a letter by Maxime du Camp and published in La Cbronique Medicale, 19 I 5, p. 280. 58. Parent-Duchatelet, Rapportsur le carage, 362. 59. Nicolas-Michel Troche, Notice bistorique sur les inhumations prooisoires faites sur la place du marche des Innocents en 1830 (1837); and Alexandre ParentDuchatelet, Note sur les inhumations et les exhumations qui ont lieu d Paris, d la suite des binements de juillet 1830, reprinted in Hygiene publique, 2:81. 60. Memoires de M. Gisquet, vol. I (1840),425-427. See also Barret-Kriegel, "Les Demeures de la rnisere," 108. 61. See Chapter 2, pp. 30-3 I, and Moleon, Rapports generaux, 1:264 (report for 1823). 62. Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet and Jean-Pierre d'Arcet, De l'infiuence et de l'assainissement des salles de dissection (183 I). 63. Quoted in Labarraque, Observations, 5. 64. Moleon, Rapports generaux, 2:428 (report for 1838). 65. Honore de Balzac, Un Debut dans la vie (Paris, 1976), 777. 66. Sponi, De la vidange, 8. 67. The names ofBoussingault, d'Arcet, Dupuytren, Fourcroy, Halle, Labarraque, and, in the bibliography, of Parent-Duchatelet, Parmentier, Payen, Thouret, and Trebuchet are particularly noteworthy. On this subject see ibid., p. 10. 68. Ibid., p. 27. 69. Thomas Tredgold, Principes de l'art de cbauffer et d'aerer les edifices publics, les maisons d'babitation, les manufactures, les hOpitaux, les serres . . . (1825); first published as The principles of warming and ventilating public dwellings, dwelling houses . . . (London, 1824). Thus Maurice Daumas's statement tHistoire generale des techniques, vol. 3 (Paris, 1969J, 522-523) that ventilation did not vary during this period requires qualification. 70. Philippe Grouvelle, Introduction to Jean-Pierre d' Arcet, Collection de memoires relatifs al'assainissement des ateliers, des edifices publics et des maisons particulieres, vol. I (1843), vii. 7 I. Tredgold, Principes des cbauffer, 27 I. 72. D'Arcer, "Rapport sur des ... fourneaux de cuisine salubres et economiques" (1821), in Collection de memoires, 113. 73. It is not my intention to analyze how these same plans recur in social perceptions; but we know how they guided the desire to control prostitution in total isolation. 266 . NOTES TO PAGES 124-130 74. Philippe Grouvelle, Introduction to d'Arcet, Collection de memoires, vi. 75. Villerrne, Des prisons, 18. 76. Chauffage et ventilation de la Nouvelle Force par Philippe Grouvelle (1845), 25. 77. See Leblanc's Recherches for a synthesis of experiments carried out in a bedroom, an infant school, a primary school classroom, a lecture room in the Sorbonne, the Chamber of Deputies, an entertainment hall (salle Favart), the military stables, and a greenhouse in the Jardin Royal. In each of these places Leblanc noted "the capacity of the enclosed area, the number of individuals, the period of time it was closed, the temperature, the method of heating, the absence or existence ... of ventilation," measured by Combes's anemometer (p. I I). For the analysis of confined air, see also Eugene Peeler, Instruction sur l'assainissement des ecoles primaires et des salles d'asile (1846). 78. See Dr. C. Grassi, Rapport . . . sur la construction et l'assainissement des latrines et losses d'aisances (1858), 32. 79. Edouard Ducpetiaux, "Extrait du rapport sur les deux systernes de ventilation etablis atitre d'essai dans la prison cellulaire des femmes, aBruxelles," Annales d'Hygiene Publique et de Medecine Legale, 50 (1853), 459 ff. 80. Ibid., p. 461. 81. Ibid. 82. Grassi, De la ventilation, 23. 83. Genevieve Carriere and Bruno Carriere, "Sante et hygiene au bagne de Brest au XIXe siecle," Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest, 3 (1981), 349. In 1822 the engineer Trotte de la Roche wrote, concerning the penal colony at Brest, "at night men do not bother to go to the latrines for their minor needs. Instead of entering the aqueduct, the urine stays on the floor and impregnates the wood." 84. See Chapter 10, pp. 173-175· 85. See Dominique Laporte, "Contribution pour une hisroire de la merde: La merde des asiles, 1830-1880," Ornicar, 4 (July 1977),31-48. 86. Quoted in Grassi, Rapport sur la construction, 37. 87. Edmond Duponchel, "Nouveau systerne de latrines pour les grands etablissements publics et notarnment pour les casernes, les hopitaux militaires et les hospices civils," Annales d'Hygiene Publique et de Medecine Legale, ad ser., 10 (July- October 1858), 356-362. 88. Quoted by Grouvelle, Introduction to d'Arcet, Collection de memoires, xxiii. 89. Franc;oisCaron, Histoire economique de la France, XIXe-XXe siecle (Paris, 198 I), 65· 8. Policy and Pollution I. See Conseil de Salubrite, Receuil des Plaintes, Archives de la Prefecture de Police, Paris. 2. Piorry, Des habitations, 38. 3. Arlette Farge, "Les Artisans malades de leur travail," Annales. Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 32 (September-October 1977), 993-1006. 4. Report by the minister of the interior concerning the motives of the decree NOTES TO PAGES 131-134 of October 15, 1810; quoted in Dr. Maxime Vernois, Traite pratique d'hygiene industrielleet administrative, vol. I (1860), 14. 5. Quoted in ibid., p. 28. 6. Moleon, Rapports generaux, z.iv, 7. Dangerous or unhealthy establishments, buildings for carrying on noisy or noxious trades, and the rest. 8. Report by the Institut's Section de Chimie, presented in 1809 to the Classe des Sciences Physiques et Marhemariques; quoted in Vernois, Traite pratique, 18. 9. Monfalcon and Poliniere, Traits de la salubrite, 172. 10. See B.-P. Lecuyer, "Demographic, statistique et hygiene publique sous la Monarchie censiraire," Annales de Demograpbie Historique, 1977, p. 242. I I. On barracks see Moleon, Rapports generaux, 2: 123 ff.; on prisons see ibid., pp. 141-150 (report for 1829). 12. See ibid., p. 185 (report for 1821), and Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, Recherches et considerations sur la riuiere de Bieure ou des Gobelins, et sur les moyens d'ameliorer son cours (1822). 13. Classes laborieuses, 173 ff. 14. This intolerance came later in the provinces: at Nevers, complaints about black dust became numerous from 1854 on; Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 38-39. 15. Charles de Launay (Mme. Emile de Girardin) complained bitterly in 1837 about this ubiquitous odor: "Every minute you are stifled by an objectionable odor ... at the corner of every boulevard you see enormous boilers on large fires poked by little men with strange faces"; Letter XIX, Lettres parisiennes (1843), 181. Dominique, when he first comes to Paris, is struck by the strong odor of gas; Eugene Fromentin, Dominique (Paris, 1972), 132 (r st ed. 1862). 16. Attempts to reduce smoke and dust were made at Fourchambault even before 1850; Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 35. t ), Monfalcon and Poliniere, Traite de la salubrite, 327-351. 18. The Commission des Logements Insalubres in Paris confirmed both this primacy of smell and the advent of new considerations. When its members took office in November 1850, they posed one preliminary question: "What should be understood by insalubriousness? ... in that respect it agrees with the Conseil de Salubrite that there is insalubriousness everywhere there is an unpleasant smell capable of vitiating the air in habitations, everywhere humidity and uncleanliness prevail, where there is lack of air and light"; Departernent de la Seine, Ville de Paris, Commission des Logements Insalubres, Rapport general des travaux de la Commission . . . pendant l'annee I85 I (Paris, 1852), 4· 19. This concern emerged in 1847; Moleon, Rapports generaux, 2:1075 ff. 20. Leonard, Les Medecins, 1151. 2 I. Knaebel, Les Problemes d'assainissement, 242-243, and Gabriel Dupuy and Georges Knaebel, Cboix techniques et assainissement arbain en France de r800 a I977 (Paris, 1979). In Haussmann's eyes, according to Knaebel (p. 242), there was the city, to be embellished in those places where the bourgeois gave himselfto the enjoyment of perception, where nothing must offend the senseswhich implied the expulsion of the dirty, the poor, the unclean, the mal268 . NOTES TO PAGES 134-140 odorous-and the "noncity." In Knaebel's view, It IS In this context that Haussmann envisaged an underground sewer system. The interpretation is stimulating; and the statement that the method of evacuation of excrement only translates the shape of the ratio of social power (p. 46) deserves even more precise analysis. Nevertheless, work by historians, particularly by Jeanne Gaillard and Jean Le Yaouanq, has shown how the traditional town resisted, often successfully, the civic enterprises of the Second Empire. The expulsion of the poor and the marginal from the center was not nearly as obvious as is too often claimed; and, as we have seen, mains drainage triumphed only at the end of the century. In short, apart from the VIlle arrondissement,the noncity remained established in the heart of the city. 22. On this subject Daniel Roche, in a paper presented at the Franco-Quebec colloquium (Ecole des Hames Etudes en Sciences Sociales, May 198 I), commented that the complaints about nuisances were not identical in different districts. Parent-Duchatelet referred to this sociology of thresholds of tolerance in a quite different context when he wrote that a certain brothel, considered scandalous in the rue Feydeau, would pass totally unnoticed in a "lowly" district; La Prostitution aParis au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1981), 150 (extracts first published in 1836 under the tide De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris . . . ). Introduction to Part Three 1. Cabanis, Rapports du physique, 526, 527, 528. This theory followed Maine de Biran's distinction between purely passive sensation and perception that presupposed some activity by the organs. In contrast, Destutt de Tracy regarded perception as a specific sensation, spread out before the mind. See Jean-Pierre Richard, Litterature et sensation (Paris, 1963), 28 and I 12. 2. Wilhelm Fliess, Les Relations entre le nez et les organes genitaux feminins presentes selon leur signification biologique (Paris, 1977; 1St ed. 1897). 3. Cabanis, Rapports du physique, p. 102. 4. "For more than half a century," Havelock Ellis observed, "no important progress was made in this field ... the subject of smell was mainly left to those interested in 'curious' subjects"; Sexual Selection in Man, 51. 5. "There is no connection between the nature of the sensory principle and the nature of understanding," Tourtelle proclaimed peremptorily in 1815; Elements d'hygiene, 479. 6. Cabanis, Rapports du physique, 293, 543 ff. 7. Quoted in Cloquet, Ospbresiologie, 45· 8. Virey, "Des odeurs," 256. The author's comments on sensory acuteness, apprenticeship, and behavior form part ofthe anthropologists' research program, defined by Joseph-Marie de Gerando; see Jean Copans and Jean jarnin, Aux origines de l'antbropologie [rancaise (Paris, 198 I), 149. 9. Kirwan, De l'odorat, 32-34. 10. Virey, "Des odeurs," 256. He was inspired by Cook's observations. The theme was revived by Cloquet, Ospbresiologie, 137. Alexander, indefatigable collector NOTES TO PAGES 140-145 ofrefuse in Michel Tournier's Meteores, was an excellent analyst of foul odors. 11. Michel Levy, Traite d'bygiene, 2 vols. (1856), 1:91. 9. The Stench of the Poor 1. P.-A. Piorry, "Extrait du rapport sur les epidemics qui ont regne en France de 1830 a 1836, lu Ie 9 aout 1836," Memoires de l'Academie Royale de Medecine, 6 (1837), 17· 2. Passot, Deslogements insalubres, 26. 3. See Maurice Agulhon, Le Cercle dans la France bourgeoise, 1810-1848. Etude d'une mutation de sociabiliti (Paris, 1977), 79. 4. Surely Madame de Girardin was insinuating this when she somewhat pessimistically wrote on October 21, 1837: "Those who do not wash their hands will always hate those who wash their hands, and those who wash their hands will always despise those who do not wash their hands. You will never be able to bring them together, they will never be able to live together ... because there is one thing which can not be overcome and that is disgust; because there is another thing that can not be tolerated, and that is humiliation"; de Launay, Lettres parisiennes, 190. 5. Charles-Leonard Pfeiffer, Taste and Smell in Balzac's Novels (Tucson, 1949). 6. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, 2 vols. (Paris, 1963), 2:5 I 3. 7. Passot, Des logements insalubres, 26. However, if one goes by the volume of publications, the censitaire monarchy remains the golden age of neo-Hippocratic "medical topography." 8. Quoted in Dr. Henri Bayard, Memoire sur la topograpbie medicale du IVe arrondissement de Paris . . . (1842), 103 ff. 9. Except in terms of food; see Jean-Paul Aron, Le Mangeur au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1976). 10. Les Miserables, 2:512. I 1. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 25. 12. Which Ramel advised, De l'influence de marais, 271-272. 13. Halle, "Air des hopiraux," 57 1. 14. In some passages Louis-Sebastien Mercier anticipated the tone of later descriptions. An example is his appalled recoil before the animality that prevailed in the faubourg St.-Marcel (see Roche, Le Peuple de Paris, 100). Nevertheless Roche recognized that medicine was at the time encroaching on private life. 15. Chauvet, Essai sur la proprete, 10. 16. Ibid., p. 8. This theme was expanded at length in Spain in the Golden Century; see Lapouge, "Utopie et hygiene," 117. 17. Ramazzini, De morbis artificum, 383. 18. Malouin, Chimie medicinale, 55. 19. C.-F. Hufeland, La Macrobiotique ou l'art de prolonger la vie de l'bomme (1838), 472 (r st ed. in German, 1797); domestic servants, chamber pots, and linen drying round the stove all came under this proscription from the nursery. These social perceptions, however, did not prevent improvement in the status of domestic servants; see Roche, Le Peuple de Paris, 76 ff. 20. In my introduction to the 1981 edition of Parent-Duchatelet, La Prostitution aParis au XIXe siecle. 270 • NOTES TO PAGES 145-149 2 I. See Jean-]acques Darmon, "Sous la Restauration, des juges sondent la plaie si vive des prisons," in L'lmpossible Prison, ed. M. Perrot (Paris, 1979), 123- 146; and Helene Chew, "Loin du debar penitentiaire: La prison de Chartres durant la premiere rnoitie du XIXe siecle," Bulletin de l'lnstitut d'Histoire de la Presse et de l'Opinion (Tours) 6 (1981), 43-67. 22. Quoted in Villerrne, Des prisons, 25 and 26. 23. Moleon, Rapportsgeneraux, 1:225. There are also innumerable other references to the stench and foul impregnation of the ragpicker. Examples include Moreau, Histoire statistique, 4 I; Lachaise, Topograpbie medicale de Paris, 190-I 92; Commission des Logements Insalubres, Rapport general des travaux pendant l'annee 1851, 12; Passot, Deslogements insalubres, 3. On the ragpickers ofLille see Pierrard, La Vie ouoriere, 54. 24. Report by the sanitary commission of the Jardin des Plantes, November 8, 1831, quoted in Annales d'Hygiene Publique et de Medecine Legale, 7 (1832), 200. 25. Barret-Kriegel, "Les Demeures de la misere," 130. 26. See Jean-Paul Aron and Roger Kempf, "Canum more," in Le Penis et la demoralisation de l'Occident (Paris, 1978), 47 ff. 27. "The odor exhaled by these sorts of places is one of the circumstances which a very numerous category of pederasts seek, as it is indispensable to their pleasures"; Felix Carlier, Etudes de patbologie sociale. Les deux prostitutions (1887), 305 and 370. This part of the book has just been reissued under the title La Prostitution antipbysique (Paris, 198 I). 28. Forget, Medecine navale, 127. 29. Dr. ].-M.-G. Itard, Premier rapport . . . sur le sauvage de l'Aveyron (1807), 88. Itard attributed this indifference to lack of education of the senses. His report has recently been reissued by Thierry Gineste in Victor de l'Aoeyron, dernier enfant suaoage, premierenfant fo« (Paris, 1981). See also Harlan Lane, The Wild Boy ofAveyron (Cambridge, Mass., 1976). 30. Forget, Medecine navale, 126. 3I. Ibid., p. 128. 32. Ibid., p. 135. 33. See Passot, Des logements insalubres, 7. 34. Gustave Flaubert, Selected Letters, trans. and ed. Francis Steegmuller (London, 1959). 35. Leonard, Les Medecins, 1140. 36. Quoted in Pierre Arches, "La Medicalisation des Deux-Sevres au milieu du XIX' siecle," Bulletin de la Societe Historique et Scientifique des Deux-Scores, 3d quarter 1979, p. 261. 37. Jules Valles, L'Enfant (Paris, 1972), 65. 38. Quoted in Pierrard, La Vie ouoriere, 87. 39. Thierry Leleu, "Scenes de la vie quotidienne: Les femmes de la vallee de la Lys: 1870-1920," Histoire des Femmes du Nord, Revue du Nord, 63 (JulySeptember 198 I), 661. 40. Marie-Helene Zylberberg-Hocquard, "L'Ouvriere dans les romans populaires du XIX'siecle," ibid., p. 629· 41. This is too vast a subject to deal with here. See Ned Rival, Tabac, miroir du temps. Histoire des moeurs et des fumeurs (Paris, 1981). • 27 I NOTES TO PAGES 149-152 42. Theodore Burette, La Pbysiologie du fumeur (1840), 21. 43. See Agulhon, Le Cercle, 53. This is clearly the opinion of 1. Rostan, Cours elementaire d'hygiene, zd ed., 2 vols. (1822), 1:546 ff. 44. Michelet, HistoiredeFrance, I 1:285-287; Adolphe Blanqui, Des classes ouorieres en France pendant l'annee r848 (1849), 209. 45. Forget, Medecine navale, 294· 46. Burette, Pbysiologie du fumeur, 86. 47· Ibid., p. 79· 48. Ibid., p. 75. 49. Parent-Ducharelet's attitude is significant from the point of view of the fear of infection. Here are two examples of the precautions advised when visiting the sick. Fodere recommended: "One must keep one's clothes entirely buttoned up ... one must never swallow one's saliva; one must spit and blow one's nose every time the need arises and, as in hospitals, wear an apron on which one frequently wipes one's hands ... after having had the covers raised, one must wait a few moments before bending down and breathing [the invalid's] first emanations; moreover, one must always avoid his breath and keep at a reasonable distance from his mouth"; Traite de mtdecine legale, 6: I I 1. A policy of keeping at a distance from foul bodies was formulated in this way. Tireless visitor to prisons, lazarettos, and hospitals, Howard confessed that he always avoided standing to leeward of the invalid. He constantly strove to hold his breath as much as possible; State of Prisons, 45 I; Principal Lazarettos, 232. 50. Monfalcon and Poliniere, Traite de la salubrite, 90. 51. Dr. A. joire, "Des logements du pauvre et de l'ouvrier consideres sous le rapport de l'hvgiene publique et privee dans les villes industrielles," Annales d'Hygiene Publique et de Medecine Legale, 45 (1851), 310. 52. Blanqui, Des classes ouorieres, 103, 98. 53. Foucault, Naissance de la clinique, 167. 54. Paul Gerbod, La Condition unioersitaire en France au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1965), 62 9. 55. Revealing on this subject was the foul odor of Brother Archangias in Zola's La Faute de l'abbe Mouret. 56. Norbert Truquin, Memoires, vie, aoenture d'un proletaire atravers la revolution (Paris, 1977), 129 (r st ed. 1888). (The description applies to 1852.) On these fringe workers, see Jacques Ranciere, La Nuit des proletaires (Paris, 1981). 57. Passot, Des logements insalubres, 16. 58. Zylberberg-Hocquard, "L'Ouvriere dans les romans populaires," 627-628. See especially the descriptions of the Lille cellars and courtyards in Mathilde Bourdon's Eupbrasie. bistoire d'unefemmepauvre (1868) and in M.-1. Gagneur's Les Reprouvees (1867). 59. Blanqui, Des classes ouvrieres, 71. 60. Bayard, Memoire sur la topograpbie medicale, 49. 61. Cf. Lachaise, Topograpbie medicale de Paris, 198. But the Rapports du Conseil de Salubrite de la Seine reveal an increase in public health concern regarding the presence of animals in Paris; dairy farms (1810-1820) and piggeries (1849- r858) first drew attention; after r859 the complaints became more diffuse; 272 • NOTES TO PAGES 152-155 the desire was to stem the presence of animals generally. In 1880 there were complaints about the odor emanating from the hospital for sick dogs. 62. Piorry, "Extrait du rapport," 17. 63. Chevalier, Classes laborieuses, 182. 64. See Alain Corbin, "Les Paysans de Paris," Etbnologie Francoise, 2 (1980),169- 176. 65. Martin Nadaud, Mimoires de Leonard, ancien garcon macon, ann. Maurice Agulhon (Paris, 1976), 103; O. d'Haussonville, "La Misere a Paris. La population nomade, les asiles de nuit et la vie populaire," Revue des Deux-Mondes, 47 (October 1881), 612; Pierre Mazerolle, La Misere de Paris. Les mauvais gites (1874), 28-31. Was it by chance that early nineteenth-century gastronomy tended to ignore cheese? 66. See the report on lodgings in Statistique de l'industrie aParis resultant d'une enqtdte faite par la Chambre de Commerce pour les annees I84 7-I848 (185 I). 67. Victor Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la mer(Paris, 1980),220. 68. Piorry, "Extrait du rapport," 17. 69. Quoted in Jean Borie, Mythologies de l'heredite au XIXe sieele (Paris, 1981), I 13. 70. See, for example, joire, "Des logernents du pauvre," 3 18. 7 1. Ibid., p. 320. 72. Piorry, Des habitations, 74. 73. Jean Starobinski, "Sur la chlorose," "Sangs," special issue of Romantisme, 198 I, pp. 113-130. 74· joire, "Des Iogernents du pauvre," 296. 75. Jules Michelet, La Femme (Paris, 1981),90 (r st ed. 1859). 76. Cervantes, Don Quixote, part I (Paris, 1946), 2 19. 77. Ramazzini, De morbis artificum, 447-448. 78. See Chapter 5, p. 78. 79. And even beyond; see Rose-Marie Lagrave, LeVillage romanesque (Le Paradou, 1980). 80. See Neil MacWilliams, paper presented at a colloquium at Loughborough University, September 1981. On the other hand, ethnographic projects at the beginning of the century gave up the study of material life and ecologicosocial observation; they neglected the material anthropology initiated by medical topographies. See Mona Ozouf, "L'Invention de l'ethnographie francaise: Le questionnaire de l'Acadernie celtique," Annales. Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 36 (March-April 19 8 1),2 13. 81. See Henry Roberts, The Dwellings of the Working Classes (London, 1850). Arthur Young also likened the peasants of Combourg to boors (Travels in France, 97). The metaphor that was to weigh heavily on rural historiography took root at that time; traces of it can be found in the recent very interesting book by Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford, 1976). 82. Balzac, Les Paysans (Paris, 1978), 121. 83. See Alain Corbin, Arcbaisme et modernite en Limousin au XIXe siecle, vol. I (Paris, 1975), 74-94, for a discussion of the poor hygiene of the peasants in the Limoges region in the mid-nineteenth century. Also revealing is Guy Thuillier, Aspects de l'economie nicernaise au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1966). . 273 NOTES TO PAGES 156-160 84. See Laporte, Histoire de la merde, 42. 85. Agrarian ideology is analyzed by Pierre Barral, Les Agrariensfranfais deMeline aPisani (Paris, 1968). 86. Piorry, "Extrait du rapport." 87. Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 64, points out that belief in the uselessness of hygienic installations for country people persisted in the Nivernais until at least the early twentieth century. 88. The stinking promiscuity of military barracks remained the paradigm of repulsive smells for the young bourgeois. It was this that convinced the newly recruited Pierre Louys that he had to get himself discharged. (Paul-Ursin Dumont has kindly passed on to me Louys's unpublished correspondence.) 89. Quoted in Monin, Les Odeurs du corps bumain, 72. 90. See Carl Vogt, Lecons sur l'bomme (1865). He wrote (p. 161): "The exhalations from the skin also have their specific characteristics, which in certain races do not disappear in any circumstances, even the most scrupulous cleanliness. These characteristic odors of race should in no way be confused with the exhalations that originate from type of food, and can be noted in the same race ... the specific odor of the Negro remains the same whatever attention he pays to cleanliness or whatever food he takes. It belongs to the species as musk does to the musk deer that produces it." 9 I. Blanqui, Des classes ouorieres, IS I. 92. Luc Boltanski, Prime Education et morale de classe (Paris, 1969), 110. 93. Moleon, Rapports generaux, 1:199. 94. Gustave de Gerando, Le Yisiteur du pauore, 3d ed. (1826), 227. 95. MonfaIcon and Poliniere, Traite de la salebrit«; 91, 89. 96. Emile Zola, Lajoie de vivre (Paris, 1975), 1026. 97. See P. Perrot, Les Dessus, 227. 98. Cadet de Vaux, "De l'atrnosphere," 435. 99. Passot, Deslogements insalubres, 20. 100. Ibid., p. 2I. 101. See Chapter 13, pp. 212-2 15. 102. See Piorry, Des habitations, 93. 103. Dr. Louis-Rene Villerrne, "Sur les cites ouvrieres," Annales d'Hygiene Publique et de Medecine Legale, 43 (1850), especially 246-258. See also, for example, Guerrand and Confora-Argandona, La Repartition, 33-41. 104. Gisquet, Memoire, 1:423-424. 105. Mille, "Rapport sur la mode d'assainissement," 223. 106. Ibid., p. 2I 3. 107. That is how he expressed himself in the Chamber of Deputies on July 13, 1848, in supporting the decree introduced by Emery on July 12. Note that these discussions took place two weeks after the crushing ofthe June uprising. On July 17 Anatole de Melun proposed the law that was the subject of the Riancey report, read on December 8, 1849. 108. Dr. Moreau had already compiled a house-to-house report at the time of the inquiry in Paris after the cholera morbus epidemic. In a more general way, Blandine Barret-Kriegel ("Les Demeures de la rnisere," 119 ff.) is right to regard this episode as a great turning point in the history of research techruques, 274 . NOTES TO PAGES 160-167 I09. Monfa1con and Poliniere, Traite de la salubrite, 92. 110. Passot, Des logements insalubres, 20. I I I. For Paris, see Guerrand, "Petite Histoire du quotidien," 55 ff.; A. Thalamy, in Cornite, Politiques de l'babitat, 59; and especially Danielle Ranciere, "La Loi du 13 juillet 1850 sur les logements insalubres. Les philanthropes et Ie probIerne insoluble de l'habitat du pauvre," in ibid., pp. 187-207. For Lille, see Pierrard, La Vie ouoriere, 92 ff. For the poor application of the law in the Nivernais, see Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 36 ff. IO. Domestic Atmospheres I. On Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, see Ozouf, "L'Image de la ville," 1279-80. 2. Jacquin, De la sante, 294-295. 3. Mauzi, L'ldee du bonbeur, 281. 4. Bayard, Memoire sur la topograpbie midicale, 90. 5. Quoted in Chevalier, Classes laborieuses, 179. 6. Erving Goffman, La Mise en scene de la vie quotidienne, vol. 2 (Paris, 1973), 62. 7. Quoted in Passot, Des logements insalubres, 16. 8. Levy, Traite d'hygiene, 1:544. 9· Ibid., p. 545· 10. Ibid. II. P.I3I. 12. Mille, "Rapport sur la mode d'assainissernent," 199. I 3. Jules Miche1et, Histoire de la Regence (1863), 394. 14. Piorry, Des habitations, 126. 15. Ibid·,P·57. 16. Hufe1and, La Macrobiotique, 470. I7. Louis Odier, Principes d'bygiene extraits du code de sante et de longue vie de Sir John Sinclair (18 23), 574· 18. Londe, Nouveaux Elements, 1:405 ff. 19. Odier, Principes d'bygiene de Sinclair, 577· 20. Anne Martin-Fugier, La Place des bonnet. La domesticitefeminine aParis en I900 (Paris, 1979), 113. 21. Piorry, Des habitations, 85. 22. Both Piorry (Des habitations, 104), and Londe (Nouveaux Elements, 2:322) denounced the intolerable odor from stoves. Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 4 I. 23. Writing about the Nivernais, Thuillier stressed the women's attachment to foorwarmers and their refusal to replace them with horwater bottles; ibid., p. 48. See also Cabanes, Moeurs intimes, 67 ff. 24. "A foul odor," according to Rostan, Cours elementaire d/bygiene, 2:44. 25. An act that revealed a new sensitivity. According toJ.-P. Chaline, La Bourgeoisie rouennaise au XIX· siecle (Thesis Paris IV, 1979), 805, "Three things are forbidden in the chamber: perfumes, toilet waters, and shoes, all because of their odors." 26. Fodere (Traiti de medecine legale, 5:44) continued to demand individual cradles for the nurse1ings crowded into the foundlings' hospital at Marseilles and boasted of "the order established in every lycee in the French Empire, where . 275 NOTES TO PAGES 167-169 each pupil has a separate bedroom, but not a separate ceiling, so that not only does the air circulate freely from all sides, but also the pupil can be supervised at every moment of day and night" (5:48). The real problem was to achieve the necessary subtle balance: to isolate odors without impeding ventilation, to abolish promiscuity and therefore homosexual relationships while at the same time controlling masturbation. 27. Londe, Nouveaux Elements, 1:404. 28. And proved it by drawing up a meticulous catalog of references to olfaction in La Comedie bumaine; Pfeiffer, Taste and Smell, 100-114. 29. For the clerk, "the atmospheric circumstances consisted of the air of the corridors, the masculine exhalations contained in unventilated chambers, the smell of pens and pencils"; Balzac, Pbysiologie de l'employe (1841), 44. Emile Gaboriau, in Les Gens de bureau (1862), allotted a large place to odors in his narrative. See Guy Thuillier, La Vie quotidienne dans les ministeres au XIXe siecle (Paris, 1976), 15, 16, and 41. Regional odors obtruded here as in the dormitories: "There is the Alsatians' office, which smells of sauerkraut, and the Provencals' office, which smells of garlic" (p. 41). The large increase in female employees around 1900 transformed the smell of the atmosphere in offices. Cheap perfume and flowers relieved its rancid atmosphere, causing what Guy Thuillier called "the unpleasant odors of the 1880s" to disappear. Earlier complaints had associated the stench of offices with masculinity and celibacy; we have seen why. 30. The stench of the courtroom, where criminal and stinking poverty were on show to the elite, avid for strong sensations, continued to be a common theme; this emphasis was the remote legacy of the terror inspired by "jail fever." See Jean-Louis Debre, La justice au XlXrsiede. Les magistrats (Paris, 1981),176. 3 I. Balzac, Old Goriot, trans. M. A. Crawford (Harmondsworth, 198 I), 3I. The stench of the college boardinghouse was even worse (see Louis Lambert, passim). The importance of the smells of this environment in the genesis of male sensitivity in the nineteenth century cannot be overemphasized. Once again, repulsion was associated with the absence of coeducation. The college boardinghouse was an accumulation of the mephitism of the walls, the social ste~ch of the domestic staff, and the odor of the sperm of the schoolmaster and his masturbating pupils. This stench, perceived as male, sharpened desire for the presence of females. 32. Charles Baudelaire, L'Inoitation au voyage (prose poem). 33. Jean-Pierre Richard, Proust et le monde sensible (Paris, 1974), 101. 34. Bachelard, La Poetique de l'espace (Paris, 1957), 32, 83, praised "the single cupboard, the cupboard with a single odor, which signifies intimacy," the cupboard, "center of order," with vegetable scents. With lavender, "the history of the seasons [entered] the cupboard. By itself lavender introduces a Bergsonian temporality into the hierarchy of the sheets. Before using them, does one not have to wait until they are, as we say, lavendered enough?" Given the association established between order and vegetable scent, the rejection of animal perfumes amounted primarily to a rejection of disorder. 35. See further discussion in Chapter I I, pp. 186-I 88. 36. Bachelard (La Poetique de l'espace, 44, 47, and 130) expanded on the theme of NOTES TO PAGES 170-174 the fundamental quality of the home, which intensified the "value of a center of concentrated solitude," stimulated the quest for "centers of simplicity" inside the house, and turned the smallest recess where the child could curl up into "the seed of a chamber." See also Chapter 12, pp. 207-208. 37. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 20-2 I. 38. Londe, Nouveaux Elements, 1:406, 407. 39. Odier, Principes d'hygiene de Sinclair, 577. 40. Guy Thuillier (Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 41) has noted that until 1900 sweeping without water remained the rule in Nivernais schools. 41. Piorry (Des habitations, 34) furnished a list of these works, including several by Benoiston de Chateauneuf 42. Forget, Medecine nauale, 198. He added: "The broom will go into all the recesses, behind, between, and underneath the chests, which have to be moved for this purpose. It is the darkest and most concealed places that require the most supervision." 43. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 202. 44. Tenon, Memoires sur les hOpitaux, 186 ff. 45. See Denis I. Duveen and Herbert S. Klickstein, "Antoine Laurent Lavoisier's Contributions to Medicine and Public Health," Bulletin 0/the History 0/Medicine, 29 (1955), 169. 46. Beguin, "Evolution de quelques strategies," 236. 47. Peeler, Instruction, 2; Leblanc, Recherches, 21. 48. Notably Passot, Des logements insalubres, 16. 49. Monfalcon and Poliniere, Traite de la salubrite, 65. 50. Piorry, Des habitations, 89. 51. In the second half of the century, architects were less concerned with health and more with the pleasure of living. Hygiene was then considered only an ingredient of comfort. See A. Thalamy in Cornite, Politiques de l'babitat, 50. 52. Quoted in ibid., p. 34. 53. Mille, "Rapport sur la mode d'assainissement," 224; Francois Beguin, "Les Machineries anglaises du confort," L'Haleine des Faubourgs, Recherches, 29 (1977), 155-186. 54. Mille, "Rapport sur la mode d'assainissement," 2 19, 221. 55. "I remember," noted Mrs. Trollope in 1835, "being much amused last year, when landing at Calais, at the answer made by an old traveller to a novice who was making his first voyage. 'What a dreadful smell!' said the uninitiated stranger, enveloping his nose in his pocket-handkerchief. 'It is the smell of the continent, sir,' replied the man of experience. And so it was"; Paris and the Parisians in 1835, 1:230. 56. Murard and Zylberman, "Hygiene corporelle et espace domestique, la salle de bains," in "Sanitas sanitaturn,' 292. 57. Piorry, Des habitations, 130,131. 58. Grassi, Rapport sur la construction, 28. 59. Ibid., pp. 29, 30. 60. Numerous documents concerning this offensive by the Parisian administration can be found in Departemenr de la Seine, Ville de Paris, Commission des Logernents Insalubres, Rapport generaldes travaux ... annees 1862-1865 (1866). • 277 NOTES TO PAGES 174-177 A systematic campaign was waged against Turkish-style bowls (holes in the ground) and temporary latrines; town councillors pinned their hopes on schools. Norms were defined (p. 79). The administration's program provided for these latrines to be "installed in the uncovered yard, isolated, facing north, to the number oftwo per hundred pupils, suitably aired and ventilated," disinfected, and placed under the supervision of the caretaker, promoted general-in-chief in the war against excrement. The model remained the school at 77 rue de Reuilly because an old woman constantly cleaned the latrines there (p. 32). What is striking in this literature is the extraordinary detail of the proposals (p. 34). Progress was greater in secondary than in primary schools and more rapid in girls' than in boys' schools. 61. Ibid., p. 34. 62. Ibid., p. 29. See also Laporte, "Contribution," 224 ff., quoting a good but much later text on this subject. The inspectors' reports frequently allude to the unpleasant odor of schools; often they were sufficient to justify a decision to close the schools down. 63. Guerrand, "Petite Histoire du quotidien,' 96-99. 64. Charles de Gaulle in his description of national temperaments notes the German habit of erecting "Gothic palaces for the needs of nature"; Vers l'armee de metier (Paris, 197 I), 27 (r st ed. 1934)· 65. Grassi, Rapport sur la construction, 29. 66. Lecadre, "Le Havre," 256-257. 67. A bathroom was installed on the first floor of the typical Lille house described by A. de Foville in 1894, at the time of the inquiry into living conditions; A. Thalamy in Comite, Politiques de l'habitat, 33. 68. Chaline, La Bourgeoisie rouennaise, 807. 69. As early as 1827, Antoine Caillot (Memoires, 2: 100) stressed the role of kept women in spreading the demand for bathrooms. 70. Alfred Picard, in Republique francaise, Ministere du Commerce et de 1'Industrie, des Postes et Telegraphes, Exposition unioerselle internationale de 1900 aParis. Rapport general administratif et technique par M. Alfred Picard, 8 vols. (Paris, 1901-3), 6:3· 71. Lawrence Wright, Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water Closets (London, 1960). This work contains illustrations of the luxurious water closets of the Victorian period (p. 206). Acanthus leaves compete with blue magnolias in decorating the ceramics. The masterpiece appears to be a bowl whose pedestal consists of a sculptured lion. 72. See Murard and Zylberman, "Sanitas sanitatum," 291. I I. The Perfumes 0/ Intimacy I. The title of this section is taken from the corntesse de Bradi (nee Agathe Caylac de Caylan; she was the pupil of Madame de Genlis), Du savoir-vivre en France au XIX·siecle (1838),210. 2. Duveen and Klickstein, "Lavoisier's Contributions." 3. A term introduced by Broussais. 4. The hygiene of the senses occupied an important place in hygiene manuals. NOTES TO PAGES 177-180 For example, Rostan (Cours elementaire d'hygiene, 1:530) stressed the importance of the hygiene of the sense of touch. 5. "The complexion must always be a mixture of roses and lilies ... if a pure color circulates beneath a white, fine, sweet, and fresh skin," decreed Louis Claye, Les Talismans de la beaute (1860), 90-91. 6. Ibid., p. 94. Jean-Pierre Richard, L'Unioers imaginaire de Mallarme (Paris, 196 I), 92 and 6 I, has written fascinating articles about the "splendor of the original white" and the genesis in Eden of the white flower, which is linked with the eternal snow of the stars. The extent to which symbolism later contributed to relaunching this taste for pearly skin is well known. Mallarrne himself extolled the virtues of snow-cream. 7. Werner Sombart, Le Bourgeois (Paris, 1926), 134. 8. Madame Celnart, Manuel des dames ou l'art de !'elegance (1833), 100. 9. Vidalin, Trait! d'hygiene domestique, 159. 10. Genevieve Heller, Propre en ordre (Paris, 1980), analyzed perfectly the convergent tactics that from 1850 on in the canton of Vaud tended to make Switzerland the land of cleanliness-the supreme virtue that hallowed all the others, since it implied perseverance. Heller proved that until World War I, efforts were concentrated more on domestic cleanliness than on cleanliness of the body. See also Marie-Helene Guillon, "L'Apprentissage de la proprete corporelle a Paris dans la deuxierne rnoitie du XIXe siecle" (Mernoire of Diplorne d'Etudes Approfondies, Paris VII, 1981). I!. Richard Sennett on the "green disease," Les Tyrannies de l'intimite (Paris, 1979), 145· 12. De Bradi, Du saooir-uiore, 180. 13. D.-M. Friedlander, De l'iducatio» physique de l'bomme (1815),54. 14. In 1804 P.-]' Marie de Saint-Ursin advised: "When, hesitating between the delights of voluptuousness and the honor of virtue, the young girl, her complexion pale, lips colorless, eyes wet with involuntary tears, seeks solitude and takes pleasure in melancholy reveries; let a long hot bath soothe the causes of this erotic orgasm; let it demolish the forces of this privileged child of nature"; L'Ami des femmes, 169. Witness the transference from the "hygiene of coquetry" to the "hygiene of temperament." 15. A. Delacoux, Hygiene des femmes (1829), 223, 224. 16. Ibid., p. 226. Parent-Ducharelet attributed prostitutes' stoutness to excessive bathing. 17. Rostan, Cours elimentaire d'hygiene, I: 507. 18. Celnart, Manuel des dames, 37. 19. Marie de Saint-Ursin, L'Ami des femmes, 117. 20. See Marie-Francoise Guermont, "La Grande Fille. L'image de la jeune fille dans les manuels d'hygiene de la fin du XIXe siecle et du debut du XXesiecle" (Master's thesis, Tours, I 98 I). 2 1. De Bradi, Du sauoir-oiore, 2 10. 22. See P. Perrot, Les Dessus, 228. 23. De Bradi, Du saooir-oiore, 191. 24. Celnart, Manuel des dames, 8-12. She also mentioned the practice of smearing the hair with egg yolk to remove grease. Dr. J.-P. Thouvenin recommended . 279 NOTES TO PAGES 180-I 82 washing the hair from time to time in warm soapy water; Hygiene populaire a l'usage des ouuriers des manufactures de Lille et du departement du Nord (1842), 27· 25. Londe, Nouveaux Elements, 2:5. 26. Celnart, Manuel des dames, 23. 27. From our viewpoint, the rapid adoption of this "invisible garment" (P. Perrot, Les Dessus, 259) was an event of the greatest importance. 28. See Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 124 ff. 29. It seems that this was the case at Minot; see Verdier, Paeans de dire, I I I-I12. For the adolescent girl, the pleasant smell emitted by new fabrics was one of the attractions of the winter apprenticeship at the couturier's (p. 2 I 5)· 30. According to Thuillier (Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 52) it was in general use among the Nevers bourgeoisie in 1900, as were sanitary towels. Bidets were used by other groups only after 1920. 3I. Martin-Fugier, La Place des bonnes, I 10. 32. Leonard, Les Medecins, 1468. 33. The advance was encouraged by the spread of enameled iron, which permitted cheap production of bowls of vast dimensions. The new requirements therefore created a generation gap. 34. See Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 54-55. 35. Villerrne, Des prisons, 34· 36. Fanny Fay-Sallois, Les Nourrices aParis au XlXrsiecle (Paris, 1980),216. 37. Verdier, Facons de dire, 122-128. Thuillier has noted an analogous process in the Nivernais. A veritable "washhouse policy" was launched in the decade 1820-1830. Control of water in the rural communes advanced rapidly between 1840 and 1870. However, a coherent and systematic sanitary policy was not defined until the law of February 15, 1902. Thuillier, Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 14 ff. 38. According to Madame de Girardin (Lettres parisiennes, 3 17), in Paris in 1837 even the fashionable gentleman exhaled a strong odor of tobacco. The tactful Paz, hero of Balzac's La Fausse Maitresse, was afraid of infecting the comtesse Laginska's barouche with a bad smell, because he had just smoked a cigar (Paris, 1976), 2:218. 39. Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 83, 179-180. See P. Perrot, Les Dessus. 40. In 1825 Madame Gacon-Dufour (Manuel du parfumeur, 31,83) stressed the decline of musk and the primacy of eau de cologne and melissa cordial. Strong odors such as musk, ambergris, orange blossom, and tuberose should be completely forbidden, according to Madame Celnart in 1833 (Manuel des dames, II). 41. Tourtelle, Elements d'bygiene, 434. 42. De Bradi, Du savoir-vivre, 214. 43. Tourtelle, Elements d'hygiene, 434-435. Rostan voiced the same opinion, Cours elementaire d'hygiene, 1:528-529. 44. Eugene Rimmel, Le Livre des parfums (Brussels, 1870), 25. 45. Ibid., p. 350. 46. Claye, Les Talismans de la beaut«, 75. 280 • NOTES TO PAGES 182-I 88 47. Louise de Chaulieu still used it to hold Marie Gaston in Memoires de deux jeunes mariees (Paris, 1979), 381. 48. A. Debay, Les Parfums et les fleurs (1846), 49· 49. See Londe, Nouveaux Elements, 2:501. 50. Madame Celnart (Manuel des dames, 92) indulgently also permitted "a few drops of eau de cologne" on bodice and stockings. 51. Londe, Nouveaux Elements, r: 59. 52. De Bradi, Du saooir-uiore, 220. The same principles inspired the list of perfumes permitted by Delacoux in 1829 (Hygiene des femmes, 233) and by Madame Celnart in 1833 (Manuel des dames, 92). 53· Rimmel, Le Livre des parfums, 369. 54. Debay, Les Parfums et lesfleers, 42. 55. Rostan, "Odeur," in Dictionnaire de medecine (Becher). See also Friedlander, De !'education physique, 70. 56. Dr. Z.-A. Obry, Questionssur dioerses branches dessciences medicales (1840),13. Madame Celnart translated the medical precepts for the benefit of her elegant readers: "Pallor, thinness, rings round the eyes, low spirits, and nervous shivers are the normal fruits of the exaggerated use of scents by people whose nerves are more or less irritable" (Manuel des dames, 91). A. Debay advised against the use of perfumed gloves, by themselves capable of causing accidents; Hygiene des mains et des pieds, de la poitrine et de la taille (1851), 20. 57. Dr. Alexander Layet, "Odeurs," in Dictionnaire Decbambre (188o). 58. See Antoine Combe, Influence des parfums et des odeurs sur les neuropatbes et les bysteriques (Paris, 1905). 59. Mauzi, L'ldee du bonbeur, 271. 60. Madame Celnart emphasized that expensiveness and discretion were inseparable where perfume was concerned. Vegetable odor dissipated more rapidly than animal scents. Accordingly, light perfume involved greater expense; its use was evidence of wealth. 61. Rostan, Cours elementaire d'hygiene, 1:528. 62. See Borie, Mythologies de I'herMite, 57. 63. See Michel Foucault, La Volonte de savoir (Paris, 1977). 64. Debay, Les Parfums et les fieurs, 50. 65. M. Barruel, "Mernoire sur l'existence d'un principe propre acaracteriser le sang de l'homme et celui des diverses especes d'animaux," Annales d'Hygiene Publique et de Medecine Legale, 1 (1829), 267-277. 66. Rostan, "Odorat," in Dictionnaire de medecine (Becher) (1840). 67. Londe, Nouveaux Elements, 1:59. 68. Cloquet, "Odeur," in Dictionnaire des sciences medicales (Panckoucke) (1819), 229· 69. Rostan, "Odorat," 2 37. 70. A perfume-pan was included in Louise de Chaulieu's trousseau (Memoires de deux jeunes mariies, 213). 71. Chaptal, Elements de cbimie, 109. 72. Debay, Les Parfums et les fleurs, 43. 73. It is known that he drew his inspiration from Laure d'Abrantes's apartments. According to Antoine Caillot (Memoires, 2: 1 34) the Directory restored to the • 281 NOTES TO PAGES 188-191 boudoir all its previous importance, and in particular its political role. It was then that hairdressers became fashionable. "The whole woman is there ... and in her bedroom," declared Baron Mortemart de Boisse in 1857 a propos the boudoir (La Vie elegante aParis, 89). 74. De Bradi, Du saooir-uiore, 221. "They greeted them with rapture like so many sisters happily refound"; Jules Janin, Un Ete aParis (1844), 238. 75. Quoted in Raymond, Senancour, sensations et revelations, 157. 76. Michelet, La Femme, 242-243. 77. Ingenhousz, Experiences sur les vegetaux, lxxxviii. 78. Michelet, La Femme, 127, 128. 79. At the most it is possible to discern an outline of an evolution. Theorists ceased to rely on nature and advised strewing lawns with odoriferous flowers: irises, lilies of the valley, violets, meadow geraniums. More specific attention was paid to aromas because of the stress on everything related to respiration. "On the banks of the river grow aromatic plants, wholesome herbs; their balsamic odor, joined with the odor of the resin from the odoriferous pines, perfumes the air and dilates the lungs";). Lalos, De la composition des pares et jardins pittoresques (1817), 88. 80. On their popularity in England, see Edmond Texier, Tableau de Paris, 2 vols. (185 2-53),1:154. 81. Cornre Alexandre de Laborde, Description des nouveauxjardins de la France et de ses anciens chateaux (1808), 210. 82. In 1858 Morrernart de Boisse ended his description of the elegant woman's apartment in this way: "All the casements on the ground floor give onto a greenhouse-garden which, four or five times during the winter, tapestrymakers transform into a small theater where society men and women play at proverbs"; La Vie elegante, 90. 83. Charles-Francois Bailly, Manuel complet theorique et pratique du jardinier, 2 vols. (1829), 1:223. 84. Baron Alfred-Auguste Ernouf, L'Art des jardins, 3d ed. (1886), 238. 85. See Edouard Andre, Traite general de la composition des pares et jardins (1879), 192 . 86. Bory de Saint Vincent, Musee des families, vol. 1 (1834), quoted in Arthur Mangin, Histoire des jardins, anciens et modernes (1887), 372. The precocity of Bory de Saint Vincent's description is noteworthy. It remains very far from Zola's model of the woman as a poisonous liana and farther still from the symbolistic scenes of the end of the century. The greenhouse that Sombreval installed at Quesnay for the benefit of his "sensitive" Callixte respected the discretion in force at the beginning of the century; Barbey d'Aurevilly, Un Prttre marie (1865). 87. Pierre Boitard, L'Art de composer et decorer les jardins, 2 vols. (1846), 2:22. 88. ).-c. Loudon, Traite de la composition et de l'execution des jardins d'ornement (130), 194. Madame Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere reported such a separation in the garden of her childhood; Memoirs particuliers (Paris, 1966), 205 (r sr ed. 1847). 89. Laborde, Description des nouveaux jardins, 210. 90. Bailly, Manuel complet theorique, 2:47. NOTES TO PAGES 191-193 91. See, for example, the role of the garden in the life of Duranty's heroine in Le Malheur d'Henriette Gerard. The description of the young girl's awakening is revealing. "She got up, heard the birds singing, smelled the flowers, looked at the changing sky"; (Paris, I 98 I) I 12. 92. Bailly, Manuel complet tbtorique, 2:57. 93. The following definitions are from Boitard, CArt de composer. 94. Note the birdsong in Modeste Mignon's garden. 95. Michelet, La Femme, 129· 96. Madame Marie Fortunee Lafarge, Heures de prison (1853), 92. The sweet odor of reseda flowers, which she had inhaled and chewed while playing, enabled Madame de Stasseville to visualize a child's corpse buried in the open ground in the box where the plant grew. This odor was so intrusive in her salon that delicate ladies refused to frequent it; Barbey d'Aurevilly, Les Diaboliques (Paris, 1973), 2 19. 97. "Who has not got a profusion of violets in his garden?" asked Bailly (Manuel complet tbeorique, 2: 174); julienne was also "one of the plants most used for the decoration of flowerbeds." The great success of what was called "ladies' stock" or, even more, "garden rocket" was also due to its magic perfume. On the other hand, tuberoses were distrusted. 98. See Pierre Boitard, LeJardinier desfenitres, des appartements et des petits jardins (18 23). 99. De Bradi, Du savoir-vivre, 22 r, 100. Marcel Detienne has described the sham cultivation practiced by Greek women in the gardens of Adonis installed on their terraces like an illusory agriculture, the antithesis ofthe cultivation ofgrains. In the nineteenth century, the pastime of growing things in flowerbeds and pots, popular among women of the elite, could symbolize the uselessness of the female's time, fortunately counterbalanced by her husband's productive activity. r o r. Madame Amet nee Abrantes, Le Messager des Modes et de l'lndustrie, March I, 1855· 102. "A charming coiffure worn by the empress quite recently," wrote Madame Arnet, "was a plait of hair placed over the forehead and braided with natural flowers. They were buds of large white daisies"; ibid. 103. Mrs. Trollope, Paris and Parisians in 1835, 2:6. In his Tableau de Paris, published in 1852, Texier emphasized at length and precisely the expansion of the flower trade as well as the splendors of the winter garden. Evenings in the Mabile garden seemed to him more fragrant than in the past. The harmony of Pilodo's orchestra blended voluptuously with the scent of jasmine and roses," noted Madame Amet (Le Messager des Modes et de l'lndustrie, July 15, 1855). Wherever it moved, the imperial feast unfolded in a debauchery of sweet perfumes. I04. See Davin, "Le Printemps a Paris," in Le Nouveau Tableau de Paris, vol. I (1834), 209· I05. Debay, Les Parfums et lesfleurs, 216. I06. Paul de Kock, "Les Grisettes," in Davin, Le Nouveau Tableau de Paris, 17 4. Davin stated that sweet peas and particularly reseda were "cherished" by the grisette and by the housewife, who "voluptuously perfumed her stomach with NOTES TO PAGES 194-I 97 them." The moment she got up, the young girl ran to her little garden ("Le Printemps aParis," 2 I I). In 1852 Texier mocked the grisette's taste for reseda, the student's for violets; "the sentimental foot soldier" preferred to offer his countrywoman a pot of cloves; Tableau de Paris, 1:153. 107. See Zylberberg-Hocquard, "L'Ouvriere dans les romans populaires," 614, on the importance given to flowers and birds by authors of popular novels. 108. See Verdier, Facons de dire, 185. 109. Cf. also Serge's pastoral at the beginning of La Faute de l'abbe Mouret. I ro. Victor Hugo, Toilers 0/the Sea, 3 vols. (London, 1866), I: I 36. III. Ibid., 3:189-190. 112. Ibid., 1:180-181. 113. Honore de Balzac, The Country Doctor (London, 1911), 122. 114. Andre, Traite general, iii. II5. Ibid., pp. 687-717. 116. A. Alphand and A.-A. Ernouf, L'Art des jardins (1886), 326. I 17. In the countryside (see the cycle ofClaudine by Colette), the innocent alliance between the young girl and the flower persisted, in contrast to the development of Parisian fashions. Symbolist art also continued to refine the parallelism between the young girl and the sweet flower. Theodor Fontane's Romantic work, notably the subtle floral symbolism of Effi Briest's garden, is revealing on this subject. I 18. Clave, Les Talismans de la beaute, 24. I 19. Claude Rifaterre suggested that the term muscadin initially (August 1792) designated grenadiers of the Lyons national guard, young men of good social position and shop and bank clerks, looked on unfavorably by the sans-culottes, who formed the military groupings in the center of the city. The term was immediately and proudly revived by interested parties; "L'Origine du mot rnuscadin," La Revolution Francaise, 56 (January-June 1909), 385-390. 120. Madame Celnart, Manuel de par/umeur (1834),225. 121. Claye, Les Talismans de la beaute, 35. 122. Pfeiffer, Taste and Smell, 27. 123. Dumas, "Les Parfums," Le Moniteur Unioersel du Soir, October 12, 1868. 124. De Bradi, Du saooir-uicre, 2 I I. 125. Chaulieu, Memoires, 1:200. 126. A. Debay, Nouveau Manuel de par/umeur-chimiste (1856), 40. 127. Madame de Girardin iLettres parisiennes, 329) dated the abandonment ofstiffness, the challenge to elegant simplicity, and the return to fantasy very precisely to 1839. Despite the demise of horticulture, the author remained loyal to the sweet odors of jasmine and honeysuckle. 128. See Vigarello, Le Corps redresst, 167. 129. The rejection of ambergris and musk remained de rigueur at the imperial court, evidence of good taste and morality. The composition of the Bouquet de l'Irnperatrice that Guerlain prepared for the sovereign is revealing on this subject. Although the perfume used by Queen Victoria on her official visit to France in 1855 was of high quality, it still included a discrediting trace of musk. The fashionable ladies of the Tuileries eagerly drew attention to it; Madame Amet nee Abrantes, Le Messager des Modes et de l'lndustrie, June I, 1855· NOTES TO PAGES 197-201 130. These findings are from a quantitative study the details of which have no bearing here. 131. See M.-L. L'Hote, Rapports du jury international, publiis sous la direction de M. Alfred Picard (Paris, 1891). 132. Claye, Les Talismans de la beaute, 56. 133. See Albert Boime, "Les Hommes d'affaires et les arts en France au XIX' siecle,' Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 28 (June 1979). 134. Rimmel, Le Livre des parfums, 24. 135. P. Perrot, Les Dessus, 325-328. 136. S. Piesse, Des odeurs, des parfums et des cosmetiques, zd ed. (1877), 4-18 (r st ed. London, 1855, The Art of Perfumery). 137. See Debay, Nouveau Manuel du parfumeur-cbimiste, 107. 138. For their bandolines and lustrines alone, Gelle freres in 1858 suggested flat, square, round flasks, "tomb," "violin," "stag-beetle," "in a case," "gourds"; survey in the series Perfumeries (Bibliotheque Nationale, V. 403), a collection of prospectuses of different firms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 139. On the concept ofthe shape ofsmells, phraseology ofsmells, and the perfumecomposer, see the very fine book by O. Moreno, R. Bourdon, and E. Roudnitska, L'lntimite des parfums (Paris, 1974)· 140. Including Lane's Modern Egyptians (1837), Sonnini's Voyage en Egypte (1799), and Duckett's La Turquie pittoresque (1855). The reconstruction of the Palace of the Bardo at the Exposition of 1867 would also have contributed to the fashion for the Orient, already relaunched by the Crimean War. It was to this latter episode that Madame Arnet attributed the still discreet revival of the use of makeup. 141. Flaubert, Correspondence, 1:558 (January 5, 1850) and 568 (January 15, 1850) (Paris, 1973). 142. Goncourt and Goncourt, Manette Salomon, 131. 143. Leonard, Les Medecins, 1468. The flasks of perfume that decorated the office of the mayor of Plassans impressed Antoine Macquart; they made him aware of the social distance between himself and Rougon and finally calmed the violence of his revolt; Emile Zola, La Fortune des Rougons (Paris, 1960), 271- 272. 12. The Intoxicating Flask 1. See Charles de Rernusar, Memoires de ma vie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1958), 110 ff. 2. Balzac, Les Paysans, 53. 3. Balzac, The Country Parson (London, 1914), 17-18. 4. See the account of his sister's wake in his Selected Letters. At the same time, the elegant ladies of Correze came in a crowd to breathe the stench that emanated from poor Lafarge's guts in the Tulle court. 5. "Nature embracing all his senses ... he forgot himself, lost himself, in seeing, in listening, in aspiring There is the scent of virginias in flower in the air that Anatole breathes There are steaming aromas, musky emanations, and wild odors mingled with the sweet scents from the bushes of cuisse de nympbe roses that perfume the entrance to the garden"; Manette Salomon, 425. 6. Maine de Biran,journal, 79· NOTES TO PAGES 201-204 7. Ibid., pp. 77, 165. 8. Senancour, "PromenadeenOctobre," Le Mercure de XlXrsiede, 3 (1823),164. 9. Maine de Biran, Journal, 152. 10. Cloquet, "Odeur," 229. 1 1. Cloquet, Ospbresiologie, 112. 12. Dr. Berard, "Olfaction," in Dictionnaire de medecine (Becher), 19. 13. Balzac, Louis Lambert, p. 607. 14. George Sand, Histoire de ma vie, vol. I (Paris, 1970), 557. 15. Charles Baudelaire, "Le Parfum." 16. Alphonse Karr, Preface to Eugene Rimmel, Le Livre des parfums (Paris, E. Dentu, n.d.). 17. G. Flaubert, Madame Bovary (Paris: Editions Pleiade, 1951), 473. Captain Bertin, the hero of The Master Passion, provides another example of the complex memory. At sea, when he breathed the odor of his native Corsica, he was assailed by "those vanished memories, which, seemingly lost for ever, have a trick of suddenly returning, no one knows why. They came swiftly crowding upon him, so had stirred up the dregs of his subconscious mind. He tried to discover the reason of this fermentation of his old life ... There was always something to account for these sudden evocations, some simple natural cause, more often than not a scent, a fragrant odour. How often the flutter of a woman's gown, wafting to him, as she passed by, the airy effluence of some perfume, had conjured up a whole sequence offorgotten incident. From old empty scent bottles he had often recovered some reminiscence of the past, while all the stray odours, pleasant and unpleasant, of streets, fields, houses, furniture, the warm scent of summer evenings, the chill breath of winter nights, always revived for him memories of long ago"; Guy de Maupassant, The Master Passion, trans. Marjorie Laurie (London, 19 6 1), 54. 18. Frornentin, Dominique, trans. V. I. Longman (London, 1932), 85. 19. This potential was understood by perfumers, who offered flasks shaped like tombs enclosing the perfume of the vanished woman. 20. Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonni de l'arcbitecture [ranfats du Xlra« XVlesiecle, vol. 6 (1859),164. Frederic and Rosanette walking at Fontainebleau saw these "exhalations of the centuries"; see Richard, Litterature et sensation, 190. 21. Theophile Gautier, "Le Pied de momie" and "Arria Marcella," in Recits fantastiques (Paris, 1981), 184,251. 22. Charles Baudelaire, "The Perfume Flask," in The Flowers o/Evil, trans. George Dillon and Edna St. Vincent Millay (London, 1936), 9. 23. Zola, Lajoie de vivre, 857. 24. T. There, Dictionnaire de pbrenologie et de physiognomonie d l'usage des artistes, des gens du monde, des instituteurs, des peres de famille, etc. (1836), 314. 25. Barbey d'Aurevilly was devastated by the idea of the odor of the beloved woman struggling against illness, as if these effluvia bore witness to distress more than anything else. "It is necessary to have smelled around her poor fevered face the breaths laden with life from the gown that encloses the woman one loves"; Un Pritre marie, 233. 26. Sainte-Beuve's novel Volupté seems to have established a model in this respect that inspired George Sand (Lelia) and Balzac (Le Lys dans la vallée). 286 . NOTES TO PAGES 204-209 27. Pfeiffer, Taste and Smell, 49. 28. Balzac, Le Lys dans la vallee, I I 14. 29. Baudelaire, "The Fleece," in The Flowers 0/Evil, 23. 30. Baudelaire, "Chanson d'apres-rnidi." 3I. See Baudelaire, "La Proprete des demoiselles belges." 32. Precisely described by Maupassant, L'Ami Patience. 33. Baudelaire's infinite variations on perfume, imaginary journeys, correspondences, and reminiscences are outside my subject. But his quest for supreme ecstasy when all the senses were overwhelmed can be regarded as the culmination of a long process, traced by, among others, M. A. Chaix, La Correspondence des artsdans lapoesie contemporains (Paris, 1919), and Jean Pommier, La Mystique deBaudelaire (Paris, 1932). The theme ofthe eternality ofperfume also obsessed Baudelaire's contemporaries; and the incitement that smells offered to travel belonged to the collective imagination (see Chapter I I, p. 199)· 34. The role of olfaction in Zola's works has already been studied by others. 35. Dr. Edouard Toulouse, Enqaite medico-psychologique sur les rapports de la superiorite intellectuelle avec la nioropatbie. Emile Zola (1896), 163-165, 173-175. 36. Leopold Bernard, Les Odeurs dans les romans de Zola (Paris, n.d.). 37. Alain Denizet, Les Messages du corps dansles Rougon-Macquart (Master's thesis, Tours, 1981). 38. Bernard, Les Odeurs dans Zola, 8. 39. Typical in this respect was the men's conversation in stage whispers at the comtesse Muffat's soiree (Nana, chap. 3). 40. See, for example, Dr. Deberle's seduction of Helene Grandjean in Zola's Une Page d'amour. 41. See Richard, Littirature et sensation, 189. 42. Flaubert, Selected Letters, 77 (Aug. 8), 80 (Aug. 9), 88 (Aug. 15); Letters 0/ Flaubert to Louise Colet, trans. F. Sreegrnuller (London, 1980), 58 (Aug. I I), 62 (Aug. 13). 43. Zola, Zest for Life, trans.]. Stewart (London, 1955), 196-197. 44. Summarized by Havelock Ellis, Sexual Selection in Man, 169 ff. Hagen thought that the odor of leather recalled the odor of the sexual organs. 45. Edmond Huot de Goncourt, Cherie (1889)· 46. Auguste Ambroise Tardieu, Les Attentats aux moeurs (1867), 183. 47. G. Mace, La Police parisienne. Un joli monde (1887), 263, 266, 272. 48. Charles Fere, La Pathologie des emotions (1892), 438-441, and L'Instinct sexuel. Evolution et dissolution (1890), 126 ff. and 2 10 ff. 49. Alfred Binet, "Le Fetichisme dans l'amour," in Etudes de psycbologie experimentale (1888), 4. He recalled that for Morel, as for Magnan, these defects were only episodes in the hereditary madness of degenerates. What seems to have been essential for Binet was the fact that in the olfactive fetishist, odor unleashed an irresistible impulse; it made him follow the woman whose effluvia fascinated him. According to Fere (La patbologie des emotions, 439), Lamartine probably liked girls from inns for this reason. 50. joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain, trans. R. Baldick (Paris, 1926), 163 (rst ed. 1884). 5 I. See Pierre Cogny, "La Destruction du couple Nature-Societe dans I'A rebours NOTES TO PAGES 209-2 I 3 de ].-K. Huysmans," and Francoise Gaillard, "De l'antiphysis a la pseudophysis: L'exernple d'A rebours," Romantisme, 30 (1980). 52. Gaston Leroux, Le Mystere de la chambre jaune (Paris, 1960), for example, 84· 53. Jean Lorrain, La Ville empoisonnee (Paris, 1936), 106-107. On "the stenches of the black village": "And the odor of the Negro, an unpleasant smell of salty butter and pepper, rises, more nauseatingly on stormy nights." Clearly, the tone has changed. 54. Dr. Edgar Berillon, "Psychologie de l'olfaction: La fascination olfactive chez les animaux et chez l'hornme," Revue de l'Hypnotisme, October 1908, pp. 98 ff. This article expresses the idea-a source of considerable anxiety at the time-that civilization entails degeneration. It analyzes the decline in the role of olfaction in that perspective. But Berillon was also very conscious that a return to a large-scale use of the sense of smell might signify regression; we thus see yet again the narrow dividing line. 55. Berillon, "Psychologie de I'olfaction," 306. Dr. Berillon rose to fame in 1915 with the publication of La Bromidrose jetide dela race allemande, foetor germanica, after having enlarged on the theme of foetor judaicus. The importance later given to racial odor in William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust is well known. 13. "Laughter in a Bead ofSweat" 1. The title of this chapter is taken from ].-K. Huysmans's phrase; see p. 199. 2. See Corbin, Archaisme et modernite, 337-362. 3. Chauvet, Essai sur la proprete, 7, 8. The Spanish government consulted the universities of Europe on the effects of this stench. 4. Fourcroy, Essai de Ramazzini, 561. 5. R.-P. Corte, "Air et atmosphere," in Encyclopedie methodique. MMecine (n87), 587. 6. For example, Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, "Essai sur les cloaques et egouts de la ville de Paris," in Hygiene publique, 1:252. 7. Parent-Duchatelet, Recherches pour decosorir la cause d'accidents, 274. 8. Michel-Augustin Thouret, Supplement au rapport sur la voirie ... (1788), 26. 9. Liger, Posses d'aisances, 12. 10. Bailly, Manuel complet theorique, 2:586. 11. Parent-Duchatelet, Les Cbantiers, 139-140, n. 40. 12. Isidore Bricheteau, A. Chevallier, and Salvatore Furnari, "Note sur les vidangeurs," Annales d'Hygiene Publique et de MMecine Legale, 28 (1842), 50. 13. See Chapter 7, p. 119, on Chevreul; and Moleon, Rapports generaux, 2:495 (report for 1839). 14. Bertherand, Memoire, 7, and Pierrard, La Vie ouoriere, 54. 15. "It is better to die of cholera than of hunger," a peasant told the mayor of the small commune of Saint-Priest-Ligoure in the Haute-Vienne; according to this magistrate, it was unfeasible to remove dungheaps; Corbin, Arcbaisme et modernite, 77. 16. Alain Faure, Paris Carime-prenant (Paris, 1978), 107. 17. Gisquet, Memoires, 458-465. 288 • NOTES TO PAGES 2 I 3-2 18

18. See Francoise Dolto, "Fragrance," Sorcieres, 5 (n.d.), 12, and 10-17 for the discussion in this paragraph.

19· Verdier, Facons de dire, 329. 20. See Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction (Paris, 1978), 574. 2 I. Faure, Paris Careme-prenant, 167. At Lille (Pierrard, La Vie ouvriere) the administration struggled for decades against "the pissers of the palisades" (p. 148). The first urinals installed in the city, during the Second Empire, inspired irony: using them was called "pissing in Paris fashion" (p. 53). In 1881 the Conseil d'Hygiene of the Seine could still report: "The floors of the lavatories are looked after, not the bowls ... What is lacking ... is the feeling, we would rather say the instinct, for cleanliness" (p. 284). But did this exist? 22. Faure, Paris Carime-prenant, 74. 23. Laporte, Histoire de la merde, 27. 24. Clocquet, Ospbresiologie, I I 5. 25. Fodere, Traite de medicine legale, 6:539. 26. Ingenhousz, Experiences sur les vegetaux; see above, pp. 36-37. 27. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 2 I 5. 28. Cited in Bayard, Memoire sur la topograpbie medicale, 88. 29. Quoted in Francois Beguin, "Savoirs de la ville et de la maison au debut au XIX'siecle," in Cornite, Politiques del'habitat, 259. Thuillier (Pour une bistoire du quotidien, 39) emphasized how obstinately the workers of the Nivernais still demanded to work in very snug rooms at the beginning of the twentieth century. He stressed the need for a history of this resistance, which sealed the bond between employers and workers and which helps explain the failure of health policy. 30. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 53. 31. Ibid., p. 161, and State 0/Prisons, 163. 32. Oliver Faure, "Hopital, sante, societe: Les hospices civils de Lyon dans la premiere rnoitie du Xl Xssiecle," Bulletin du Centre d'Histoire Economique et Sociale de la Region Lyonnaise, 4 (1981), 45-51. 33. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation 0/ Dreams, ed. James Strachey (London, 197 I), 238-239. 34. Bordeu, Recherches, 426. 35. Howard, Principal Lazarettos, 141; but the point concerns an opinion that was widespread among the masses in the following century; see, for example, Corbin, Archai"sme et modernite, 80. 36. Francoise Loux and Philippe Richard, Sagesse du corps (Paris, 1978). 37. What Francois Beguin ("Savoirs de la ville," 257) defines in these terms underlay a complex body of practices. Love of alcohol, tolerance of promiscuity, a preference for not working, ease of sexual contact, wandering the streets, and the search for anonymity all played a part. "Primitive bodily comfort" implied that dirt was better tolerated than effort. It supported confusion and strength of smells; it opposed the reforms of the "comfort" economy that authorities were trying to impose. "One walks comfortably only if one's thighs touch," Jules Renard's Ragotte declared, and thus justified her refusal to wear underpants; Thuillier, Pour une historie du quotidien, 58. 38. Boltanski, Prime Education, 83 ff. NOTES TO PAGES 218-225 39. Limousin proverb, in Corbin, Arcbatsme et modernise, 8 I. 40. Francoise Loux has shown the utility of some of these prohibitions. For example, the refusal to remove dirt from children's heads corresponded to the wish to protect the fontanelle; Le feune En/ant et son corps dans la medecine traditionnelle (Paris, 1978). 41. Lapouge, "Utopie er hygiene," 104; Aries, L'Homme deuant la mort, 472. 42. Alain Corbin, "La Vie exemplaire du cure d'Ars," L'Histoire, 24 (May 1980), 7- 15. 43. Lapouge, "Utopie et hygiene," 108. 44. Flaubert, Correspondence, 1:97· 45. Flaubert to Ernest Chevalier, October 23, 1841; Correspondence, 1:86. 46. See Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Idiot de la famille (Paris, 197 I), 3:523. 47. See Lapouge, "Utopie et hygiene," I I 1. 48. Valles, L'En/ant, 102. 49. Ibid., pp. 257, 321. 50. Stressed by Beatrice Didier, Introduction to L'Enfant, 5 I. Valles, L'En/ant, 87. 52. Ibid., p. 73. 53. Ibid., pp. 87-88. 54. Unless Valles exaggerated his rebellions as a child in order to show that the political revolt of his mature years was rooted in his childhood. 55. Valles, L'En/ant, 89· 56. On the Republican printers in the rue Cog-Heron: "It is as good as the smell of dung. It smells as warm as in a stable"; ibid., p. 373. 57. Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn (London, 1971), 119-121; Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum, passim. On the other hand, Bloom's association of ideas concerning the role of female odors (James Joyce, Ulysses (London, I936J, 356- 357, 690-69 I) constitutes a long catalog of stereotypes; the Dublin petit bourgeois knew nothing of the "libertinage of the nose." I4. The Odors 0/Paris 1. Trelat, "Rapport," 25. 2. For example, Chretien, Les Odeurs de Paris, 8. 3. Ibid., pp. 10 ff., and Alfred Durand-Claye, Observations des ingenieurs du service municipal de Paris au sujet des projets de rapport prismtis par MM. A. Girard et Brouardel(1881). 4. With the one exception that, for a brief period, the microbe was sometimes called the microbian miasma. 5. Paul Brouarde1, in De !'evacuation des vidanges, 36. 6. Dr. Francois-Franck, "Olfaction," in Dictionnaire Decbambre (1881), 99. 7. Marie-Davy, in De !'evacuation des vidanges, 65. 8. Quoted in Aries, L'Homme deuant la mort, 533. 9. Marie-Davy, in De !'evacuation des vidanges, 64. 10. Trelat, "Rapport," 19. 11. Durand-Clave, Observations des ingenieurs, 21-22. 12. Ibid., p. 23. 290 • NOTES TO PAGES 225-228 13. Ibid., p. 50. 14. Marie-Davy, in De l'eoacuation des vidanges, 69. 15. Ibid. 16. See Murard and Zylberman, "Sanitas sanitatum." 17. Marie-Davy, in De !'evacuation des vidanges, 68. 18. See Alain Corbin, "L'Heredosyphilis ou l'impossible redemption," Romantisme, I (1981), 131-149. 19. O. Boudouard, Recherches sur les odeurs de Paris (Paris, 1912), 6. The author quoted an 1899 report by the Service for the Inspection of Classified Establishments. 20. There were eleven at Aubervilliers, two at Saint-Denis, three at Ivry, two at Vitry, and one in Paris; Paul Brouardel and Ernest Mosny, Traiti d'bygiene, vol. 12 (r9IO), 161.

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The Foul and the Fragrant

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