Some Curiosities

Abstract

Robert Boyle’s gloves were not the only historical objects which were remarkable for the tenacity with which they retained their odour. There were also, for example, the documents of Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777), the renowned Swiss anatomist, botanist, physician, physiologist and poet, the residence of Sir Isaac Newton and, no doubt, not a few others. Von Haller recorded his finding in his celebrated Elementa Physiologiae Corpori Humanis (Lausanne: 1763) and Dyson has recently stated that a few grains of musk sufficed to perfume for several years the study of England’s greatest natural philosopher. And it was in 1961, just three centuries after The Sceptical Chymist was published, that Greeley in the U.S.A. told of his sandalwood paper cutter, still emitting odour after one hundred years, and of his nose calculated to be capable of detecting one fifty-billionth of an ounce of the vapour of sandalwood oil.

“And now I will shut up this chapter with an instance, that some will think, perhaps, no less strange than any of the rest, which is that though they that are skilful in the perfuming of gloves, are wont to imbue them with but an inconsiderable quantity of odoriferous matter, yet I have by me a pair of Spanish gloves, which I had by the favour of your fair and virtuous sister that were so skilfully perfumed, that partly by her, partly by those that presented them her as a rarity, and partly by me, who have kept them several years; they have been kept about eight or nine and twenty years, if not thirty, and they are so well scented, that they may, for aught I know, continue fragrant divers years longer. Which instance, if you please to reflect upon, and consider, that such gloves cannot have been carried from one place to another, or so much as uncovered, as they must often have been, in the free air, without diffusing from themselves a fragrant atmosphere, we cannot but conclude these odorous steams to be unimaginably subtil, that could for so long a time issue out in such swarms, from a little perfumed matter lodged in the pores of a glove, and yet leave it stocked with particles of the same nature; though, especially by reason of some removes, in which I took not the gloves along with me, I forgot ever since I had them, to keep them so much as shut up in a box.” Robert Boyle

Auf seinen Nasen schreitet einher das Nasobēm, von seinem Kind begleitet. Es steht noch nicht im Brehm.

Es steht noch nicht im Meyer. Und auch im Brockhaus nicht. Es trat aus meiner Leyer zum ersten Mal ans Licht.

Auf seinen Nasen schreitet (wie schon gesagt) seitdem, von seinem Kind begleitet, einher das Nasobēm. Morgenstern