bodies possess "a somatic quality that was once regarded as 'aura' and could even exert a healing power" (see Alain Corbin)
Duden also cites Mark Bloch (1942) who writes on the aura's "effects on scrofula" (a kind of tuberculosis?)
Corbin notes that between 1740 and 1800 "[t]he personal aura [came to be considered instead as] repulsive body odor"
part of "[t]he use of the 'body' as an instrument of social classification" (16): "scientific" analyses "determined that the poor reeked," and we see the beginnings of the emphasis on the odor of foreign races (in France this was targeted at the Seljukes and the Samoyeds)
"The body aura was obliterated" (Duden, 14)
see Corbin's The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination
see Bloch's The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France