Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/26

14 I am blushing now for what I have been saying about Ireland, Cologne, Lucerne, France, and even the East.

This last instance, however, opens up a large subject, that, namely, of malodorous industries. Of these there is a great number, too great indeed for me to do more than make a passing allusion to them. The proximity of evil-smelling works and factories to human habitations is, as a matter of fact, prohibited by the Public Health Acts, but it is naturally impossible to remove them entirely from the knowledge of mankind inasmuch as the workers frequently carry the atmosphere about with them. Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for us, by reason of the rapid exhaustion of the olfactory sense (which we are about to deal with in the following section), they are, for the most part, not incommoded by the objectionable airs they work in.

Perhaps the worst of all are the bone-manure factories, malodorous mills which are almost invariably situated at a distance of several miles from any dwelling-house, as it would be impossible for any one but the workers themselves to live in their neighbourhood, These unfortunate people, many of whom are women, carry, as I have already remarked, the stench about with them on their clothing and persons, and I have observed that, being themselves insensitive to the odour, they