What the Nose Knows - Avery Gilbert [57]
Odor-associated symptoms are fertile ground for misinterpretation. If you believe that a particular odor is making you sick, that odor is likely to make you sick even if your original symptoms were caused by something entirely different. Van den Bergh finds that such beliefs better predict odor-induced symptoms than does the person’s actual history of odor exposure. People can be made ill by a mistaken belief about a smell. Believing trumps smelling.
IN THE DECADE and a half since the hue and cry in Marin County, many researchers have investigated the MCS/IEI phenomenon, trying to better characterize its symptoms and determine its cause. A review of the large literature on the topic found little evidence that perfume ingredients were the root cause. In fact, it concluded that the toxic-exposure theory of MCS/IEI was dubious: its “hypothesized biological processes and mechanisms are implausible.” At the same time, a growing body of scientific evidence points to a nontoxic explanation. Another review found that a psychogenic theory—the idea that the condition originates in the mind as much as the body—is well supported. MCS/IEI may be a psychogenic illness, with patients suffering from the runaway results of symptom learning and stimulus generalization. What’s happening to people in the real world may reflect the principles that Pam Dalton and Omer Van den Bergh discovered in the laboratory.
The psychological nature of odor aversions has been known for over a century. “Imagination has, besides, a great deal to do with the supposed noxious effect of perfumes,” wrote Eugene Rimmel in The Book of Perfumes, in 1871. Rimmel tells of a lady “who fancied she could not bear the smell of a rose, and fainted on receiving the visit of a friend who carried one, and yet the fatal flower was only artificial.” Contemporary research has confirmed the power of the mind. What we believe about a smell, and the malevolent power we attribute to it, alters our sensory perceptions and our physiological responses. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: we believe that scent can makes us sexy, relaxed, or alert. This is merely the other side of the coin.
The psychogenic hypothesis doesn’t sit well with some IEI patients. They believe their problem is caused by chemicals and nothing else, and they resent any suggestion that some of the problem may be in their heads because it implies their suffering isn’t real. The good news for them, if they will only hear it, is that the psychogenic hypothesis points to a treatment and to the hope of a happier life.
From Sacrament to Sacrilege
Fear of fragrance is one of those currents that flows through society like an underground stream. Fed by a mix of well-meaning sympathy, honest confusion, and alarmist hype, it bubbles to the surface here and there, with ironic results.
you love righteousness and hate wickedness.
Therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness above your fellows;
your robes are all fragrant with myrrh
and aloes and cassia.
—PSALMS 45:7
Church members who are wearing scented products, hair sprays, freshly dry-cleaned clothing, or clothing that was cleaned with fabric softeners, or who have been in a smoky room, will significantly contribute to indoor air pollution.
—Accessibility Audit for Churches, A United
Methodist Resource Book about Accessibility
Now, can it be possible that in a handful of centuries the Christian character has fallen away from an imposing heroism that scorned even the stake, the cross, and the axe, to a poor little effeminacy that withers and wilts under an unsavoury smell? We are not prepared to believe so….
—MARK TWAIN, About Smells (1870)
I Smell Dead People
HARRY (BILLY CRYSTAL): Suppose nothing happens to you. Suppose you live there your whole life and nothing happens. You never meet anybody, you never become anything, and finally you die one of those New York deaths where nobody notices for