Fluidum letale

Fluidum letale is a pseudo-scientific concept invented by the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse, a retired courtier turned amateur scientist living on his estates near Montpellier. The theory holds that the earth itself constantly emits a corrupting gas, a so-called fluidum letale, which lames vital energies and sooner or later extinguishes them entirely. According to the marquis, all living creatures instinctively endeavor to distance themselves from this lethal influence by growing upward—away from the earth—which is why their most valuable parts (ears of grain, blossoms, the human head) are lifted heavenward. In old age, as organisms begin to bend and buckle back toward the earth, they inevitably fall victim to the gas, into which they are finally transformed once they decompose after death.

The Theory's Application to Grenouille

When the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse learned that a man had been found in Pierrefort who had dwelt in a cave for seven years—completely encapsulated by the corrupting element of the earth—he was beside himself with delight and immediately had Grenouille brought to his laboratory for examination. He found his theories confirmed most graphically: the fluidum letale had already so assaulted Grenouille that his twenty-five-year-old body clearly showed the marks of senile deterioration. The marquis declared that only the fact that Grenouille had been given earth-removed plants (presumably bread and fruits) for nourishment had prevented his death. He proposed to restore Grenouille's former healthy condition by the wholesale expulsion of the fluidum, using a vital ventilation machine of his own devising.

The Vital Ventilation Machine and Diet

The marquis locked Grenouille in a box made of tightly jointed pine boards, which, by means of a suction flue extending far above the house roof, could be flooded with air extracted from the higher regions and thus free of lethal gas. The air escaped through a leather flap-valve in the floor, and a staff of servants tended the apparatus day and night so that the ventilators never stopped pumping. Surrounded by this constant purifying stream of air, Grenouille was fed a diet of foods from earth-removed regions: dove bouillon, lark pie, ragout of wild duck, preserves of fruit picked from trees, bread made from special wheat grown at high altitudes, wine from the Pyrenees, chamois milk, and frozen frothy meringue from hens kept in the attic of the mansion. This combined treatment of decontamination and revitalization lasted for five days.

The Public Demonstration and Its Success

After the treatment, the marquis had Grenouille bathed, shaved, trimmed, and dressed in a silk shirt, blue velvet frock coat, and buckled shoes. He applied white talcum make-up to Grenouille's scarred face, dabbed his lips and cheeks with crimson, and dusted him with his own personal violet perfume. Presenting Grenouille at the University of Montpellier, the marquis described him as living proof of the validity of his fluidal theory. He stripped Grenouille of his rags piece by piece, explaining the devastating effects of the corrosive gas: pustules and scars, a giant shiny-red gas cancer on his breast, general disintegration of the skin, and clear evidence of fluidal deformation of the bone structure (a club-foot and a hunchback). The lecture was an immense success, and the learned audience applauded vigorously. A week later, when Grenouille reappeared healthy and well-dressed, the change was so egregious that even the marquis's enemies were silenced, and the crowd broke into frenetic cheering for the fluidum vitale.

Grenouille's Manipulation of the Theory

Grenouille, who had never actually been ill, quickly learned to exploit the marquis's credulity. When he needed to gain access to a perfumer's laboratory to create a human-scent perfume, he faked a fainting spell and claimed that the marquis's violet perfume—containing violet root extract of subterranean origin—was triggering a relapse of his fluidal contamination. The marquis, deeply impressed by this argument presented entirely under the aegis of his own theory, immediately ordered all violet perfume removed from the house and sent Grenouille to the best perfumer in the city. Grenouille then used the laboratory to create the artificial human odour that would allow him to pass unnoticed among people for the first time in his life.

The Fate of the Theory and Its Proponent

The marquis's fame spread without any tour on his part. A long article about the fluidum letale Taillade appeared in the Journal des Sçavans and even in the Courier de l'Europe, and fluidally contaminated patients came from far and wide for him to cure them. In the summer of 1764, he founded the first Lodge of the Vital Fluidum with 120 members in Montpellier, establishing branches in Marseille and Lyon. Determined to conquer the entire civilized world with his teachings, he undertook an expedition to the Pic du Canigou in the Pyrenees, intending to be left at the summit for three weeks and then descend as a strapping lad of twenty. Casting his garments from him in the icy cold, he began the climb alone and disappeared into a blizzard, never to be seen again. His teachings, however, suffered no damage; a legend arose that he had merged with the eternal fluidum vitale and now floated forever above the peaks of the Pyrenees. Well into the nineteenth century, Taillade's fluidal theory was advocated from many a chair at faculties of medicine and put into therapeutic practice by occult societies, and secret Tailladic lodges continue to meet annually on both sides of the Pyrenees.

Thematic Significance

The fluidum letale theory functions as a satirical device through which Süskind mocks the Enlightenment's faith in scientific systems that explain everything while understanding nothing. The marquis's elaborate pseudo-science—with its ventilation machines, special diets, and grandiose public demonstrations—is a perfect parallel to the way Grenouille himself will later use perfume to manipulate human perception. Both the theory and the perfume are elaborate fictions that produce real effects in the world, and both reveal the profound gullibility of people who desperately want to believe in simple explanations for complex phenomena. The theory also provides Grenouille with his first experience of being treated as a human being, albeit a degraded one, and teaches him the crucial lesson that appearances—whether of health or of scent—can be manufactured to control how others perceive and respond to him.