Fingers & Fumbs: General Kissing Notes

eggshaped · 317670. Wed Apr 16, 2008 10:29 am

A 2008 study showed that kissing someone as a greeting is healthier than a handshake, which is more likely act as a transmitter for disease. Predictably enough, this is because you don’t know what someone has been touching before they touch you. The Roman Emperor Tiberius (AD14-37) didn’t agree though, he issued a decree banning kissing, because it was believed to be responsible for the spread of an unpleasant fungoid disease called mentagra, which disfigured the faces and bodies of Roman nobles. Kissing in public is illegal in India and in the last few years similar laws have been drafted in countries such as Russia and Indonesia.

Philematologists study the evolutionary history of kissing, they have various theories as to the origin of the kiss. It could be mothers chewing food and passing it to their children, or because we’re trying to sniff out a mate, or maybe just because it feels good and so intensifies the feeling of being in love. But what is puzzling is that some cultures, around 10% of all humans, do not kiss. Freud called kissing “the sexual use of the mucous membranes of the lips and mouth”.

A 1819 German travel guide to London claimed “The kiss of friendship between men is strictly avoided as inclining towards the sin regarded in England as more abominable than any other”, this was perhaps good advice as a recent poll claimed that 53% of Yorkshiremen would hit a man who tried to kiss them.

Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/13/nkiss113.xml
http://www.livescience.com/mysteries/070306_kiss_why.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1624022.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/jul/06/gender.uk1

Flash · 318066. Wed Apr 16, 2008 6:14 pm

I know this isn't a discussion thread, but I'd just like to enter a speculation of my own invention, which is that the lengthy French kiss with tongues is mainly a Hollywood invention which has escaped into the population at large (Hollywood having invented it because it was the most erotic thing they were allowed to show). Does it feature in literature written before the days of film, as far as we know?

Jenny · 318147. Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:57 pm

Well Fanny Hill was written in 1748 and contains this passage:

Flash · 318224. Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:02 am

OK, forget that theory then.