of having partaken of any kind of food, or at anything disgusting. This
suspicion receives support from the fact, of which I am assured by Mr.
Sutton, that the monkeys in the Zoological Gardens often vomit whilst
in perfect health, which looks as if the act were voluntary. We can see
that as man is able to communicate by language to his children and
others, the knowledge of the kinds of food to be avoided, he would have
little occasion to use the faculty of voluntary rejection; so that this
power would tend to be lost through disuse.
As the sense of smell is so intimately connected with that of taste, it
is not surprising that an excessively bad odour should excite retching
or vomiting in some persons, quite as readily as the thought of
revolting food does; and that, as a further consequence, a moderately
offensive odour should cause the various expressive movements of
disgust. The tendency to retch from a fetid odour is immediately
strengthened in a curious manner by some degree of habit, though soon
lost by longer familiarity with the cause of offence and by voluntary
restraint. For instance, I wished to clean the skeleton of a bird,
which had not been sufficiently macerated, and the smell made my
servant and myself (we not having had much experience in such work)
retch so violently, that we were compelled to desist. During the
previous days I had examined some other skeletons, which smelt
slightly; yet the odour did not in the least affect me, but,
subsequently for several days, whenever I handled these same skeletons,
they made me retch.
From the answers received from my correspondents it appears that the
various movements, which have now been described as expressing contempt
and disgust, prevail throughout a large part of the world. Dr.
Rothrock, for instance, answers with a decided affirmative with respect
to certain wild Indian tribes of North America. Crantz says that when a
Greenlander denies anything with contempt or horror he turns up his
nose, and gives a slight sound through it.[1109] Mr. Scott has sent me
a graphic description of the face of a young Hindoo at the sight of
castor-oil, which he was compelled occasionally to take. Mr. Scott has
also seen the same expression on the faces of high-caste natives who
have approached close to some defiling object. Mr. Bridges says that
the Fuegians express contempt by shooting out the lips and hissing
through them, and by turning up the nose. The tendency either to snort
through the nose, or to make a noise expressed by _ugh_ or _ach_, is
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