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January 18, 2008

Strange But True!

Q. If there's one relatively harmless experiment you're probably glad you missed, this is it. The subjects' nostrils flared, faces turned away and went pale, heart rates went down, blood pressure went up, sweat poured onto the skin, and finally stomachs started to convulse. Though they were paid good money to endure as long as they could, no one lasted more than five minutes. Lasted at what?

A. In a famous experiment, volunteers were given a full face blast of animal excrement — skatole — as a way of testing the human “pure disgust reaction in action,” says Virginia Smith in “Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity.” Sensuous disgust is seated deep in the insula, the area of the brain that malfunctions in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, causing them to wash and clean things endlessly or vacuum unrelentingly. The opposite is sensuous delight, or all things “that pleaseth and comforteth the brain wonderfully,” such as fine food, good music, soft caresses. Ironically, these have been much less studied than the objects of disgust, says Smith, while being apparently every bit as necessary for the body.


 
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