Scent: The Mysterious and Essential Powers of Smell

by Annick Le Guérer, Richard Miller (Translator)

"All my genius resides in my nostrils, " claimed Friedrich Nietzsche. Now comes a splendid new voice to bear him out - Annick Le Guérer. In this enchanting, erudite, and highly readable exploration of all things olfactory, she investigates the uses and properties of scent through the ages in relation to magic, myth, religion, sex, discrimination, philosophy, and medicine. From the perfumed rituals of ancient religions to the saintly "odor of sanctity"; from the aromatic cures of the Middle Ages to the black market for spiceladen mummies; from Proust's tea-dipped madeleine to our contemporary "odorphobia, " Le Guérer explains and documents the mysterious and essential powers of smell: to attract or repel; call up deep memory; induce lust, love, hunger, even trance. Recalling by turns Patrick Suskind's Perfume and Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses, Scent is an enchanting melange of storytelling and scholarship, a sensual journey across boundaries of time and culture that touches on universal myths and intimate desires.

Genres: History, Science, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1988

Reviews

[Gretchen Rubin]

An academic book. I skimmed it to focus on the parts that interested me, which were very interesting. It happened to include a lot of material about how people viewed the role of scent during various plagues.

[Sacha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes laborious reading, but interesting subject matter.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an occasionally interesting foray into medical history, cultural history, and the plague years, and how scent was key to medical treatment and divinity in antiquity. I guess we can count ourselves lucky (??) that we weren't ordered to burn aromatic woods and blast cannons down the street during the covid years...