Bui The Hoa

“In Elizabethan times lovers were so enamored of each other’s body odors that it was common for a woman to keep a peeled apple in her armpit until it had absorbed her sweat and smell. She would give this “love apple” to her lover to sniff at in her absence. We, on the other hand, use synthetic aromas of fruits and flowers to mask our body odor from our lovers. Which of these two approaches is acquired and which is natural is not so easy to determine. A substance as “naturally” repugnant to us as the urine of cows is used by the Masai tribe in East Africa as a lotion for their hair—a direct consequence of the cow’s importance in their culture. Many tastes we think “natural” are acquired through learning and become “second nature” to us. We are unable to distinguish our “second nature” from our “original nature” because our neuroplastic brains, once rewired, develop a new nature, every bit as biological as our original.”
― Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science