Grigori Efimovich Rasputin and Pheromones

Pheromones
© By Abraham Lincoln

As we all knew, our nasal cavities or used for a lot of things but smelling trace amounts of pheromones that females emit when looking for a male, might be something you missed in third grade. If you are a girl you have the same Vemeronasal Organ in your nose and its function is to stimulate the Limbic Region of the brain—the emotion seat that is responsible for our ordinary emotions as well as sexual attractions. If you take a bath or shower every day, or, if you douse yourself with perfumes, your emission rates will be somewhere between sewage gas and the perfume counter at Macys.

Remember Grigori Efimovich Rasputin—the Siberian monk who was constantly fielding fair ladies and some gentlemen of the court?  His debauchery gave rise to a new castle wing filled with royal bastards. He smelled so bad that ordinary people turned and walked the other way when he was seen on the streets. Yet, his pheromones were stout and promised the ladies and a gentleman or two, a treat they seldom passed up.

You can skip bathing like your forefathers who notched a stick each time they fell in the creek. Getting wet in the rain was tolerable but taking a bath in a tub made people sick. The pope, decreed that since too many nuns were getting pregnant bathing in the bath water the priests just left, that bathing was banned for life.

After you reach age 75 or thereabouts, your smeller is turned off and for good reason. Old people, like us, look around and raise their noses and smell, repeatedly, but the pheromone odors are gone. Old folks do not get excited when old people limp by or shuffle past in house slippers—their pheromones no longer work. But when a young lady in a bikini walks past an old man, he gets a twinkle in his eye – unless he has Alzheimers.