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Show Latest Information On Sense Of Smell Reveals Odd Facts The thing that makes a mar a gourmet is not his palate but his nose and there's far more tc that snubbed, retrousse, hooked or classic feature than meets the eye, according to a survey of leading medical and scientific scienti-fic authorities. Except for four primary tastes sweet, sour, bitter and salt, affecting af-fecting the taste "buds" in the mouth, what we savor depends upon what we smell and this wonderful capacity is inherited as much as red hair or blue eyes. A woman has a keener sense of smell than'a man but a dog, or any other animal can beat them both by a nose, exceeded only by insects whose seense of smell beat all. Humans, Hu-mans, however, have more of a sweet tooth than- bees and can taste a sugar solution one fifth as strong as the weakest solution a bee is able to detect. Smell Associations It isn't true that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," for the sense of smell, a subtle thing, depends not on itself alone but also on its associations. as-sociations. Some people, for in stance, even like the smell of skunk, and psychiatrists say that's because it is probably associated as-sociated with pleasant childhood memories. Almost everyone can testify to the memory-provoking powers of a smell. And the scientific basis for this is that none of the senses is more extensively ex-tensively connected with the brain centers that control our other senses; thus no other sense is more thoroughly tied in with past events and feelings. feel-ings. Everyone Has Personal Odor Heavy smokers will be glad to know that the report pooh-poohs pooh-poohs the idea that smoking dulls the sense of smell. Medical Med-ical experiments find no difference dif-ference between smokers and non-smokers on this score. Nor are the most fastidious people most sensitive to odors in say a stuffy, over-crowded place. On the contrary, "the individual's native capacity to detect odors determines how sensitive he is,': says the report, "and not his personal habits." And everyone, well-scrubbed or unwashed, has a personal odor which is an important im-portant factor in repelling and attracting others. |