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These products of the
Orient were equally in demand by the toilet and the temple. The
unctorium was an adjunct of the Roman bathroom. Kings had to be greased
and fumigated before they were thought fit to sit upon a throne. There
was a theory, not yet altogether extinct, that medicines brought from a
distance were most efficacious, especially if, besides being expensive,
they tasted bad like myrrh or smelled bad like asafetida. And if these
failed to save the princely patient he was embalmed in aromatics or, as
we now call them, antiseptics of the benzene series.
Today, as always, men are willing to pay high for the titillation of the
senses of smell and taste. The African savage will trade off an ivory
tusk for a piece of soap reeking with synthetic musk. The clubman will
pay $10 for a bottle of wine which consists mostly of water with about
ten per cent. of alcohol, worth a cent or two, but contains an
unweighable amount of the "bouquet" that can only be produced on the
sunny slopes of Champagne or in the valley of the Rhine.


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