Most olfactory scientists discount the possibility
How important is the number of nostrils to your ability to detect and identify stenches?
"I'm not saying it's completely impossible, I'm just saying—what is your point? – William W. Bourkwhite
A critical factor in the ethnographic study of gastrointestinal humor is, of course, detection—which is to say, olfaction. At a recent conference of the Southwestern Suburban Gym Locker Attendants and Cleaners Association that I attended (and was honored to give the third-day keynote address), a hot topic of discussion proved to be the question of how a putative third nostril would affect 1) one's sense of smell, 2) one's ability (in the case of SSGLACA members) to complete one's tasks without emisis, and 3) one's relative capacity to initiate humorous dialog regarding gastrointestinal odors vs. topical bacterial odors. I was able to inform the gathering that this is, in fact, a venerable line of inquiry in the field of gastrointestinal humor. Kittridge (1978) identifies it late 18th-century correspondence of two Beacon Hill society matrons in Boston, and traces the question down several lines of inheritance to the monthly minutes of a meeting of a well-regarded manure farmers' benevolent association in the San Fernando Valley in the mid-1930s. Bandera and Petersen build on Kittridge's work to formulate what we today call the Three-Nose-Hole Postulate (TNHP), and speculate that an actual TNH individual living in Northern California in the first half of the 20th century was the focal point of this otherwise speculative exercise. My colleague William Bourkwhite, formerly of the University of Southeastern New Brunswick, disputes Bandera and Petersen's central claim.
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