Perfumes and suffumigation

Use in the book

The bodily route is sometimes smelling, sometimes exposure to fumes, and sometimes modification of the whole room. Burton’s external-medicine catalogue explicitly offers perfumes “to smell to.” The nasal-medicine paragraph adds perfumes and suffumigations to preparations taken into the nostrils, without making every one a liquid nasal medicine. In the regulation of air, warm moist surroundings are seasoned with perfumes; Laurentius’s vessel releases aromatic vapour as water evaporates, whereas the next recommendation concerns juniper smoke. Burton adds that the latter is much used at Oxford to sweeten rooms. Evaporation and burning therefore remain distinct operations even where both produce what he calls a perfume.

The claimed benefit of scent also has different degrees of commitment. Burton says odoraments refresh brain and spirits and cites Proverbs for gladdening the heart; nourishment by smells is then something “some say” and a question debated in the schools, for which Ficino supplies arguments. The biblical reference does not establish that further physiological claim. Yet the story of Louis XI gives a striking limit: all available fragrant perfumes fail to remove his persistent perception of a foul smell. In the neighbouring poet’s story, an ointment’s disliked odour itself becomes the enduring object of an imagined smell. Perfume’s agreeable quality does not automatically correct a disordered sense. The odorament definition remains with Epithemes.

In the account of apparitions, fumigating materials, perfumes and smoke appear with candles and optical devices among natural means of making people look altered. “As if” concerns appearances, not an actual change into animal-headed beings. The surrounding discussion moves from sleep deprivation and sleight of hand to reflected and projected images. Perfume belongs here to a repertoire of sensory manipulation, not solely to pleasant recreation. The separately owned Vapours records preserve these exact suffumigation attestations.

Religious treatment introduces an unresolved tension rather than a single endorsement. Burton condemns numerous exorcistic forms in the papal writers, including suffumigations among their associated means. Near the work’s end he nevertheless reports herbal fumigations, lights, fires and perfumes for people or places believed troubled by spirits. The reported rationale is that good spirits are attracted or pleased and evil ones repelled. In that later account, the printed Latin about poisonous fumes is grammatically uncertain: the supplied modern column treats them as something from which afflicted minds are relieved, not as an additional agent to be administered. The invocation of Tobias likewise does not make the ensuing sulphur-and-gum list the biblical recipe. These are attributed historical claims, and their efficacy is not established by their inclusion.

Perfumes repeatedly mark luxury and artificial display. They adorn the unworthy rich person in the prefatory satire and flavour the excessively elaborate dishes criticized in the diet catalogue. A perfumed chamber later belongs to the pleasure-based treatment attributed to Epicurus; Burton immediately endorses Cicero’s mockery of that “prophane physik,” while acknowledging other writers’ approval. Fragrance is thus neither inherently virtuous nor inherently corrupt. Its value depends on the scene, excess and moral argument. The personal-grooming satire includes men’s perfumed hair and scented gloves as well as women’s adornment, so it should not be summarized as exclusively a criticism of women.

The maxim about a woman’s best smell supplies a sharper reversal. The Latin says she smells right when she smells of nothing; Burton restates this as having no perfume at all. That explanatory move turns absence of scent into a preference for unadorned appearance, continued by the praise of plainness over ornaments. The preceding paragraph’s substitution of moral and religious qualities for cosmetics gives the maxim its polemical setting; it is not a new physiological finding about fragrance.

The love passages make the senses rhetorical in opposed ways. The lover’s soul is, in Burton’s attributed Plutarch comparison, full of perfumes and pleasing music; the immediately preceding paragraph has deliberately turned to love’s attractive and civilizing effects. Elsewhere the compulsive lover perfumes his hair as part of a burdensome regimen of grooming. To undo attraction, Burton tells the reader to imagine the beloved scented with foul-smelling gums. That is a proposed mental picture, not a report that a particular woman actually smells this way. Finally he calls fumigatory tests of a woman’s sexual history “strange absurd trials,” attributed to a jealous inventor. The tests are objects of criticism, not endorsed ways of knowing.

Related entries

Vapours, especially suffumigation · suffumigations · local use 1 and suffumigation · suffumigations · local use 2, retains the deceptive-appearance and haunted-room suffumigations; Air, especially perfume, retains the pleasant room perfume. Epithemes, especially odorament, owns odorament. Charms and Obsession and possession retain their ritual and spiritual categories. Compare Simples for ingredients rather than the methods of exposing the senses to them.

Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 15Perfumes adorn the morally unworthy rich in the prefatory satire.
2. Subsection 1 Bad Diet as a Cause. Substance. The Quality of Foods · paragraph 45Mixed dishes introduce the attack on elaborate diet. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
3. Subsection 1 Bad Diet as a Cause. Substance. The Quality of Foods · paragraph 46Perfumed dishes among culinary refinements.
4. Subsection 1 Bad Diet as a Cause. Substance. The Quality of Foods · paragraph 47The following paragraph attributes bodily harm to the diet. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
5. Subsection 3 Particular Symptoms From the Influence of Stars, Parts of the Body and Humours · paragraph 35Fragrant perfumes fail to relieve Louis XI’s perceived stench.
6. Subsection 3 Particular Symptoms From the Influence of Stars, Parts of the Body and Humours · paragraph 36The poet’s lingering imagined odour after medicinal ointment. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
7. Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraph 26Sleep deprivation and sleight of hand frame the visual examples. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
8. Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraph 27Suffites, perfumes and suffumigations in altered appearances.
9. Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraph 28Optical projection and reflection continue the natural explanations. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
10. The Second Partition. The Cure of Melancholy. Section 1. Member 1. Subsection 1. Unlawful Cures Rejected · paragraph 52Reported natural and magical expulsions of devils. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
11. The Second Partition. The Cure of Melancholy. Section 1. Member 1. Subsection 1. Unlawful Cures Rejected · paragraph 53Burton’s polemical condemnation of exorcistic forms.
12. Member 3. Air Corrected. With a Digression on Air · paragraph 18Artificially modified air seasoned with perfume.
13. Member 3. Air Corrected. With a Digression on Air · paragraph 19Evaporating aromatics distinguished from juniper smoke.
14. Subsection 4 Cheerfulness, Merry Company, and Pleasing Sights as Remedies · paragraph 37Attribution and qualification of the Epicurean treatment. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
15. Subsection 4 Cheerfulness, Merry Company, and Pleasing Sights as Remedies · paragraph 38A perfumed chamber in the reported pleasure-treatment scene.
16. Subsection 4 Cheerfulness, Merry Company, and Pleasing Sights as Remedies · paragraph 39Burton endorses Cicero’s objection while preserving dissent. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
17. Subsection 5 Compound Alteratives Criticism of Compounds and Mixed Medicines · paragraph 30Perfumes among substances intended to be smelled.
18. Subsection 3 Compound Purgatives · paragraph 45Fumigations beside preparations administered through the nostrils.
19. Subsection 5 Alteratives and Cordials That Strengthen the Body, Disperse the Remaining Matter and Improve the Temperament · paragraph 16Scent’s refreshing power distinguished from disputed nourishment. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
20. Artificial Attractions of Love and Incitements to Lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and So On · paragraph 35The Latin funeral-perfume comparison. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
21. Artificial Attractions of Love and Incitements to Lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and So On · paragraph 36Perfumed hair and workshops for making scent.
22. Artificial Attractions of Love and Incitements to Lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and So On · paragraph 37The satire expressly includes men’s excess. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
23. Artificial Attractions of Love and Incitements to Lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and So On · paragraph 42Moral adornment replaces cosmetics in the preceding exhortation. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
24. Artificial Attractions of Love and Incitements to Lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and So On · paragraph 43Smelling of nothing becomes no perfume at all in Burton’s explanatory gloss.
25. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 2The lover’s servitude introduces the grooming account. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
26. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 3Perfuming hair as recurring work imposed by infatuation.
27. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 50A turn toward love’s better effects. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
28. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 51Perfumes in the lover’s soul, with marginal suffitibus.
29. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 19Scented gloves in the male suitor’s display.
30. By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men and Women, the Miseries of Marriage, the Consequences of Lust, and So Forth · paragraph 47Sense-based scrutiny prepares the imagined counterimage. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
31. By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men and Women, the Miseries of Marriage, the Consequences of Lust, and So Forth · paragraph 48Perfumed with foul gums in a hypothetical degrading image.
32. Symptoms of Jealousy: Fear, Sorrow, Suspicion, Strange Actions, Gestures, Outrages, Confinement, Oaths, Trials, Laws, and So On · paragraph 41Perfumes as fumes in tests Burton calls absurd.
33. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraph 7The herbs antecedent to all which in the fumigation claim. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
34. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraph 8Suffitus and the uncertain poisonous-fumes construction.
35. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraph 10Perfumes and fumigations in allegedly haunted rooms.
36. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraph 11The ensuing substances are not the Tobias recipe. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
37. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraph 14The attributed good-spirit and evil-spirit explanation.

In this edition

The list “suffites, perfumes, suffumigations” aligns item by item with “Fumigating substances, perfumes, smoke.” This is not a licence to render the middle term smoke in every occurrence. In the nasal catalogue, suffumigations becomes “fumigations”; in the rejected sexual tests, perfumes itself becomes “fumigations.” The foul-gum fantasy uses the neutral “scented” for perfumed, preserving the context’s bad smell. The final Latin suffitus is rendered “fumigations,” while the marginal suffitibus in the lover’s soul is “incense.” These are actual Latin forms, not English spellings silently normalized. The grammar of venenatis fumis remains uncertain in the supplied edition, and no new external collation resolves it here.

suffites

Substances used to produce fumigating smoke.

Original wording: “suffites, perfumes, suffumigations”

Modern wording: “Fumigating substances, perfumes, smoke”

Suffites aligns with the first item alone. The accompanying suffumigations is already indexed at suffumigation · suffumigations · local use 1; keeping the list intact shows that the modern column distinguishes materials, perfumes and their smoke. Lookup: suffite; suffites; fumigating substances.

perfumes to smell to [family construction]

Aromatic preparations used through the sense of smell.

Original wording: “odoraments, balls, perfumes, posies to smell to”

Modern wording: “scented substances, scent balls, perfumes and bouquets to smell”

The final purpose phrase applies across the list, while each noun retains its own referent. Odorament stays with odorament. The negative no perfume at all rejects this kind of adornment in favour of plainness. The heading is a family construction assembled for lookup, not a claim that perfumes to smell to is a contiguous quotation. Further checked occurrences: the passage. Lookup: perfume; perfumes; to smell to.

suffumigations [medicinal administration]

Applications of medicinal fumes, associated here with the nasal route.

Original wording: “To these you may adde odoraments, perfumes, and suffumigations”

Modern wording: “To these you may add scented preparations, perfumes and fumigations”

These supplements follow the liquid-or-dry errhines, but are not thereby identical to every nasal preparation. This local medicinal use supplements, and does not reassign, the earlier visual and haunted-room records. Lookup: suffumigation [medicinal]; medicinal fumigation.

perfumed; perfuming [scenting]

Treated with fragrance, or applying fragrance to something.

Original wording: “perfuming his hair”

Modern wording: “perfuming his hair”

The lover repeatedly scents his hair among other grooming tasks. Related uses scent a room or gloves; the different objects do not require separate definitions of the scenting action. Further checked occurrences: the passage, the passage, the passage, the passage. Lookup: perfumed; perfuming; scenting; perfumed closet; perfumed gloves.

full of perfumes [figurative phrase]

Filled with imagined fragrance, expressing the lover’s delight.

Original wording: “the soul of a man in love is full of perfumes and sweet odours”

Modern wording: “the soul of a man in love is full of perfumes and sweet scents”

The sensory image occurs during the turn to love’s good effects and is attributed to Plutarch. It does not describe a medicinal substance physically placed inside a soul. Lookup: perfumes [lover’s soul]; full of perfumes.

perfumed [disagreeable scent]

Scented with a substance, here one represented as foul-smelling.

Original wording: “perfumed with Opoponax, Sagapenum, Assa fœtida”

Modern wording: “scented with opopanax, sagapenum, asafoetida”

The verb does not guarantee a pleasant smell: the following description calls the gums filthy. The reader is told to suppose or imagine this scene; no actual beloved is established as having these qualities. Lookup: perfumed [foul gums]; scented [negative].

perfumes [fumigatory tests]

Fumes or aromatic vapours used in alleged tests.

Original wording: “by Stones, perfumes, to make them pisse, and confess I know not what in their sleep”

Modern wording: “using stones and fumigations to make women urinate and confess I know not what in their sleep”

Perfumes contributes fumigations; the stones and alleged outcomes belong to other parts of the construction. Burton explicitly dismisses the tests as absurd products of jealousy. Lookup: perfumes [fumigation]; fumigatory tests.

suffitibus

Incense or fumigations, here in a figurative filling of the lover’s soul.

Original wording: “tota referta suffitibus & odoribus”

Note translation: “entirely filled with incense and scents”

Suffitibus supplies incense, odoribus scents. The dative or ablative plural form is retained as printed; the governing referta makes the local construction one of being filled with these imagined delights. Lookup: suffitibus; suffitus [printed fumigation form]; incense [love image].

The related printed body form suffitus occurs in “by their suffitus”, rendered “as fumigations”,. There it names a supposed treatment rather than the lover’s imagined incense; the surrounding claim of relieving demonic affliction and poisonous vapours remains part of the attributed historical account, with its compressed syntax, not an endorsed efficacy claim.