Butterflies follow
Lovingly the flower-wreath
Placed on the coffin.
That’s a beautiful haiku by Meisetsu.
There is a strong association between flowers and funerals in several cultures, but have you ever thought about a corpse and perfumes in any sensory association?
Here is a note of mine.
Eau de Cologne smells good. A corpse stinks. Neither is a simple process, and both have something in common. Fragrances are compositions of different scents called "notes". Top notes, the lightest ones, emerge immediately after you have applied a spray or after shave, and last for about 5 to 10 seconds. Middle notes (also called heart notes) emerge after about 15 minutes and last up to an hour or more. Bottom notes, the heaviest ones, come out last and linger for several hours. These notes have a parallel in the vapours and odours produced by decomposition of a corpse. And this is why some American chemists are about to develop an 'electronic nose' that can "smell" a corpse and accurately assess the 'time since death'. They say a body passes through three distinct stages after death: "liquefaction of cells autolysis, bacterial decomposition of tissue (putrefaction) and skeletonisation". So you can monitor which chemical changes correlate to different periods of time since death. Ideally, when waved over a corpse, the electronic nose identifies the vapours and odours still present. What is picked up by this nose can be checked against what is gathered from literally nosing around. The latter include environmental factors and clues. Well, let us nose around.
Is there any research along this line?
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