What Did the Past Smell Like? | Hacker News Reader

What Did the Past Smell Like?

nautil.us

127 pointsdnetesn134 comments

According to Patrick Süskind, 18th century Paris smelled like this:

> [...] a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of mouldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlours stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulphur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood.

> People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master's wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the King himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the Queen like an old goat, summer and winter. For in the 18th century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life, that was not accompanied by stench. [0]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Story-Murder-Patrick-Suskind/...

Can see why smoking was so popular.

One smell your used to is a lot better than all that.

For those that don't know, fermented tobacco smells way different than modern "cigarettes". Many non-smokers actually do enjoy the smell of an unlit real cigar, some even like the smoke smell (to a degree). As a cigar smoker, I could never smoke a Marlboro cig or of that ilk. Those smell horrid. All jokes aside, it's almost like the difference between organic and "conventional". So them using smoking as an air freshener is a pretty legit way of covering up horse shit stench.

Before anyone says it, yes it's still bad for me, no I don't care.

I can't tell them apart. Maybe I just like them both too much.

Most don’t care either, just do it far as hell away.

This. Real tobacco smells lovely until you light it on fire. The smoke stinks; not the actual tobacco.

Really really high quality cigars can actually smell quite nice.

No, they really don't. The "better" the cigar, the more disagreeable the smell of the smoke. And I say that as a (cigarette and pipe) smoker (and real snuff user) for more than forty years.

Yes, cigar smoking is bad for you, but the amount of cigars you need to smoke per day before your statistically significant risk of cancer increases is five. Yes, five. As in 5. And I don't mean "Black-N-Milds", I mean five robustos.

Hilariously enough, this research was conducted by the American Lung Association. I became aware of it when a data scientist friend of mine who smokes cigars quite often was telling me about it. He tore the study apart, up and down, back and forth. It was solid science, or at least, solid data science. And I trust his opinion implicitly.

Now for me, that'll never be a concern... I probably smoke 50-100 cigars a year, so I fall so far below the statistically significant risk of cancer that I don't even concern myself with it now.

I'm really scared to open this can of worms... but I'll say this. I still think my cigar habit is not the healthiest. I only do about 2 to 4 a month. However i will agree that the "tobacco studies" are done on the chemical cocktail cigarettes. With the vast range of just shit they put it in, it's not hard to believe they cause cancer. But a fermented leaf cigar that's only bound with rice glue or whatever that other plant glue is, I think becomes similar to the difference of road safety between vehicles. Theres a chart I recently saw on transportation deaths per 1 billion passenger miles traveled. It was like .7 for planes, 1.5 for trains, 10 for cars and 200+ for motorcycles. To me, cigarettes are the motorcycles, cigars are the cars and the plane is being a nonsmoker, mostly because nonsmokers still get lung/throat cancer. I haven't seen a study on just cigar or pipe tobacco. Only on cigarettes, which again, I'm super against. Not defending Marlboro or the ilk. But I won't be blind that there isn't an increased risk in both me smoking cigars along with drinking alcohol. Im just mitigating my risk taking with both moderation and overall danger factor.

Damn it, this was a can of worms response...

Anyways, got a recommendation for someone that enjoys Alec Bradley Black Markets? Im looking to try something new out of left field soon.

Sin Compromiso Seleccion No. 5 Parejo and No. 7 Parejo are my current go-tos. They're some of the best smokes I've had in a long time.

I got a box of 13 for $156 at my local retailer. They're not inexpensive, but as I said, I don't smoke often anyway, so cost is less of a factor in my decisions.

H. Upmann The Banker series is a favorite of mine right now. The green box are the best, then the grey. Henry Clay stalk cut and the Brevas. Buy a single of every RoMaCraft and take notes on what you like. Any Olivia Melanio. Any Crowned Heads is worth trying. H. Upmann by AJ Fernandez Toro is a perfect cigar.

I once estimated that cigarettes would take 50,000 doses to kill you. That's pretty far from a deadly poison.

I figure I'll take up smoking when I'm 80. :-)

A pack a day smoker would reach that amount in 6 years yet a lot of people smoke way more than 50k doses.

Mind linking? My dad is worried about it so I'd love to put his mind at ease, a quick google couldn't turn it up.

As I said in the comment, I don't have the link, I was talking to a friend who's a data scientist.

I love this. But how do you smoke cigars? Do you get a nicotine hit? Do you partially inhale? I find cigars mystifying.

I've smoked a dozen or so cigars in my life, so I'm no expert, but you only draw cigar smoke into your mouth but you don't inhale. Think of it like using your diaphragm to inhale but in a kind of halting way combined with just dropping your jaw to increase your mouth's empty volume and pulling a slight negative pressure (maybe it's vaguely similar to playing a wind instrument?). You typically draw on a cigar very slowly anyways since they can burn unevenly if you draw fast or get them too hot. And yes, nicotine can be absorbed through the mouth and you definitely get a nicotine hit.

The same basic idea applies to tobacco pipes too.

You don't inhale into your lungs, you bring it into your mouth. Even seasoned cigar smokers, if they slightly inhale into their lungs, go into a coughing fit from doing to when they screw up. While I never smoked chemical cocktail cigarettes, people don't typically chain smoke cigars. Most people smoke one a day. However, that also depends, you have different lengths of cigar too. Some short, then you get the Churchill length (I'll let you figure out why). Also diameter of the cigars are different. Oh how full bodied the cigar is (typically these are the stronger cigars, lots of caveats to this, there's a cigar culture similar to wine culture, lots of nuance). The nicotine hit varies. Some smoke a few mellow cigars, which is like drinking Bud Lights, while for me, I like fuller bodied cigars. Half a full bodied can knock you like drinking 2 IPA beers. You can get tipsy from smoking a cigar.

Honestly, here's a pretty good video to teach you why people like cigars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79GnBpNuVBo

I watched it shortly after I got into cigar smoking and learned a lot from it.

I'll also say this, I have severe doubt that nicotine itself is highly addictive. In the last 3 years, I have a few 3-5 month time spans of not smoking cigars. No reason either. Just, I didn't feel like it. I've never had the feeling to, "I have to smoke today". I only do so as a relaxing time on the weekend, some parties, and celebrations.

Nicotine itself is highly addictive. How else would one explain the business model of JUUL and the other ecig companies and all the anecdotes of users who never smoked before they started vaping? Vaping is nicotine only with some supposedly safe fillers that also might cause popcorn lung.

Okay so. You can take the cigar smoking community and a majority don't have an addiction to smoking. They all have similar stories to me of just stopping without thinking about it for long stretches of time.

Then you have the cigarette and ecig community that are constantly sucking on those things every hour. Mostly children because pipes and cigars are more of a 30+ year old product. Maybe there's something to the age demographic.

Anyways, one is just pure tobacco with nicotine, the others are chemical cocktails. All nicotine studies I've seen come from cigarettes. Haven't looked at the ecig ones mostly because I never cared for that crap for the exact same reason as cigarettes, they're chemical cocktails.

Look, I'm just tired of people telling me that "You're addicted and just don't know it". Until this discussion, the last cigar I had was... August? Or it was late July. I don't remember. I know I had a few during July. Maybe one or two in August. I just haven't thought about it and I never had an urge. After 3 years of smoking, I might be on maybe cigar number 40 or 50. While there are some who just chain smoke everyday, a vast majority don't. My observations and experiences on cigar smoking don't add up (by a lot, not a little bit) to what you're saying and it's not like you hang out at cigar bars either, so you can only trust some other prude random schmuck or this crass internet random schmuck.

Again, I'm not advocating that cigar smoking is safe. You probably shouldn't do it. Hell, I'll tell you right now not to, just to make sure I never have to chat with someone like you at a cigar shop. I just don't think it's smart to apply ecig and cigarette studies to cigars when the ingredients don't match just because you have a knee jerk reaction from following what Nancy Reagan said back in the day.

I'm kinda in the same boat, except I smoke hookah occasionally. Like, once every four months or so. Guess I'm addicted?

The reason you aren't addicted is because you don't smoke often. Smoking cigs every day causes addiction, not the other way around.

Smoke a cigar every hour and you will be addicted too. I've gotten addicted separately on different forms and it is all the same. Fine in moderation (like a cig or a dip a day), but once you start ramping up beyond a certain baseline you will get a hell of a headache trying to claw it back. Feels exactly the same as a heavy caffeine addiction but it hits a half hour after the nicotine when its bad.

Nicotine itself isn't highly addictive; at least, not as mythologized in the anti-smoking campaigns. Its addictive potential is strongly dependent on factors like speed of uptake (itself a function of method as well as chemical formulation), and behavioral and social associations developed at the time of habituation. It's why cessation alternatives like nicotine gum have very poor track records, and why vaping has the potential (partly realized) to be both a considerable benefit to public health as well as considerable impediment.

> Half a full bodied can knock you like drinking 2 IPA beers. You can get tipsy from smoking a cigar.

Back when I used to smoke, I tried cigars a few times. They tasted good, but they'd make me sick even before I could finish one. I'd end up nauseous and laying on the floor trying to force myself not to throw up for about an hour. They would seriously fuck me up, and there's a reason I mostly just stuck to kreteks until I quit.

That a lung cancer occurs at some rate such that a particular study could only detect it when smoking five cigars a day doesn't actually tell you anything about your individual risk without knowing the population size of the study. Well, it tells you that there's probably some causative connection between smoking and cancer, but it definitely doesn't give you a "safe" threshold beneath which you can smoke without risk.

Also, shouldn't you be more concerned about oral cancers and cardiovascular disease? I understand most people don't inhale cigar smoke into their lungs like they do cigarette smoke, so you would certainly expect the lung cancer risk increases to be relatively lower.

One thing that matters is that cigars (and some other tobacco products e.g. snuff) generally cause mouth and throat cancer instead of lung cancer, because they are used differently. So it's worth verifying what exactly the studies compare, as a result about a difference in lung cancer does not imply an equivalent difference in cancer as such.

Second hand cigar smoke gives me a headache and nausea rather quickly. It's hard to see how that cannot be deleterious to one's health.

On the other hand, cigarette smoke always smelled good to me. Good enough that I didn't try smoking as I knew I'd never be able to quit.

Not sure about cigars, but pipe smoke almost always smells very nice.

Pipe and hookah tobacco is typically flavoured. Cigars are typically not, outside of "cigars" like Black and Mild, Swisher Sweets, etc.

While I agree with the smell of pipe smoke, trying to smoke a pipe was easily the worst smoking experience i've had. It was just terrible. It just tastes bad, and is a PITA.

You might be ready to invest in my startup: https://blog.carlmjohnson.net/post/2019/introducing-bummr/

As a non smoker, I've always found the actual smell of a burning cigarettes to be sweet and attractive. I think this is because some of my earlier memories are being a little boy waiting for the bus in freezing cold Russia, and seeing soldiers smoking. It looked warm and pleasant, so I think I associated the smell with pleasure.

Places with stale smoke, like bars and smoker's houses still smell bad though. Its the actual smoke from a cigarette that I like the smell of.

God... being Polish, there are so many jokes here and you know it :P I really dont know where to start.

But it's also interesting because my parents smoked cigarettes too. Cant stand them. Cigars are my thing, but cigarettes... nope. It's such a weird repulsion too. The whole childhood memory link stuff is so weird and inconsistent or perhaps more complicated than we imagine.

I have a theory that smoking often skips a generation because people as they become adults revolt against the status quo and don't want to be like their parents. Then the cycle repeats with their children rebelling by smoking. This is just anecdata though, would love to see a study on it.

Makes me wonder how much better the situation was in rural areas.

It depends on the specific years and places, but cities have almost always been net negative on human life. In that they import people from the countryside due to heightened death rates in crammed 'urban' areas. Rural life has had a history of being 'clearer' and healthier as a result of lower density. Though the ravages of diseases tend to affect less populated areas worse as the inhabitants are not as immune to a variety of diseases, however this is debated. The rise of Romanticism / countryside-escape and the Industrial Revolution occur at the same time for the reasons the OP mentioned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism

This is way too rosy about peasant agriculture and rural life in peasant societies. People primarily leave the countryside because they are literally starving to death there, and can’t get jobs. After moving to the city, people have access to more steady/reliable income and food supply, more material goods, more education, etc.

Even though conditions are often dangerous and unpleasant, they are nonetheless an improvement, and people go back to their villages and encourage their friends to follow along.

> pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots

Is this the smell of urine, or something they applied to cover up smells of human waste?

c diff proliferating in the solid waste?

Indole. Also what causes the sweet fragrance signature or jasmine and most fragrant white flowers. It’s the smell of poop and rotting waste.

https://deathscent.com/2016/01/19/the-chemistry-of-death-and... [..] What does fleshy tuberose, cooked Brussel sprouts, chocolate, the musk of human sex, faeces, and a decomposing body all have in common?

Indole, dirty, sexy, carnal Indole. You have smelled it thousands of times without knowing its name, but if you are smelling something a little bit overripe, heavy, and with a strange sweetness, it is most likely Indole. Even untrained noses can pull out the waft of clammy decay in a magnolia blossom, the crotch-like quality to heady jasmine or the slightest smell of poop in roses. That is Indole.[..]

Also: https://www.mizubrand.com/blogs/news/the-story-of-indole-in-...

[..] What gives florals their seductive power?

Let me introduce you to a little compound called indole. Indole Molecure, White florals and indole in natural perfumery

Indole is, by definition, an aromatic heterocyclic compound which contains a six-membered benzene ring, fused to a five membered nitrogen-containing pyrrole ring.

If that doesn’t mean much to you, here’s the what you need to know; it smells.

Perhaps poop isn’t the best description for indole. In its pure, isolated form, Indole is more like musty, wet, yet also a penetrating sharp-clean smell. A sort of odd combination of wet-dog, stale hot breath and moth balls all rolled into one.

Yes, this compound does contribute to the smell of feces ( mixed together a cornucopia of other things ) but trace amounts are also founds in “White” florals, like Jasmines, Tuberose, Neroli, Orange Blossom Gardenia, etc. What really creates the signature aroma of #2 is really when high concentrations of indole are mixed with humidity and the surrounding decaying molecules found in poop.[..]

Extremely fascinating, thank you!

And also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skatole

Skatole or 3-methylindole is an organic compound belonging to the indole family. It occurs naturally in the feces of mammals and birds and is the primary contributor to fecal odor. In low concentrations, it has a flowery smell and is found in several flowers and essential oils, including those of orange blossoms, jasmine, and Ziziphus mauritiana.

Can't find where, but recently there was an article about the birth of chemical sanitation which led to an odd cycle of cleaner surroundings followed by side effects from using all kinds of acids and solutions which smell was not pleasant too.

Also I wonder if the countryside wasn't a lot better than big cities like paris ..

> Also I wonder if the countryside wasn't a lot better than big cities like paris ..

Between Town and Country, the aristocracy has historically considered the former to be the lesser choice.

In many places, the aristocrats lived in the city for the winter (when the cold kept the smells and disease at bay) and in the country for the summer.

I've spent long periods in the zero-tourism parts of some developing nations, and from an olfactory perspective (among others) the countryside is always infinitely preferable to big cities.

Go hiking for a week without showering. You can smell the soap and shampoo on the day hikers from many yards away. You acclimate to just about anything.

I went to school with a guy who stopped bathing. After a couple of weeks, he was so pungent that the smell actually became somewhat sharp and startling. Standing next to him was almost overwhelming. Eventually, school staff had to take him aside and mandate that he start showering. It's hard to imagine living in a world where everyone smelled that way all the time.

Keep in mind that our bodies are used to regular bathing, and overproduce the oils and grease and other "junk" on our skin and hair. Of course a person who stopped bathing for a few weeks would smell terrible, but I do wonder if a person who hadn't bathed in months or years would smell so bad? Honestly, I imagine that the smell would be strong, and not entirely pleasant, but not horrible. More akin to a roofer coming home after a hot day. Smelly, sure, but it's not overpowering, and I could see that smell just fading away if everyone smelled that way.

In my grad program there were a few foreign exchange students that obviously didn't bathe very often and the smell was quite overpowering. Maybe diet contributes to it and we have more availability of spices and other pungent things.

But I got assigned an office with one of the students and decided to hold office hours elsewhere.

I believe hiding smells has been a thing for a long time so I can't imagine it just goes away.

I'm sure you're right. Plus, it's not like people in the "olden days" didn't bathe at all, even if it was to just take a dip in a lake.

Probably would, humans aren't the only creatures that clean up after them selves or bathe

I read about a guy who studied this. He said that after some time (a month or two IIRC), his body's bacteria adjusted to have a lot more of the ones that ate ammonia, and his scent went from terrible to quite neutral, and not strong at all.

I would link it but it's been ages since I read it.

I seem to recall him using water but no sodium lauryl sulfate shampoos.

Going to have to look for that article now

Found it, at least the one I seem to recall reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-sh...

People who don't shower do smell very very bad after a while, that smell doesn't go away but somehow gets to this familiar rank baseline that I've noticed on a number of unshowered people one might encounter in public. Not sure why it always ends up on the same note smell wise, but fade away it does not.

Did a solo 3-passes trek in Nepal in Everest region, where I've spent some 9 days continually above 4500m, once slept in 5300m. Did take 1 shower (more like warm bucket) cca in the middle. No smell smelt at all. Same would go for Aconcagua expedition, also 1 shower, and that was 2.5 weeks. Some members of the team skipped that shower altogether.

I can deal with not showering during longish hikes. But still sensitive to nikwax. That’s the smell I associate with hikers. Not body odour.

In cold climes, you don’t sweat as much. Which is why it’s important to hydrate a lot. And you pee it out. You can only induce sweating by increasing body heat and spices do a great job. The importance of sweating can’t be underestimated. Sweating is the trigger that encourages us to hydrate.

Exactly. The zero-pont of scent perception is not fixed. One never smells one's own halitosis... If one is lucky they have a good friend that will alert them. I would guess that every perception of how the "past" smells is biased by by zero-point of ones own ... biochemical cloak ... ]?]

I think of this sometimes when people are being sensitive about a fart or some fish. Are we really so delicate that even ordinary natural smells have become intolerable? Wouldn't we be better off becoming reacquainted with natural smells instead of constantly trying and failing to avoid them?

^ Found the person who microwaves 3 day old fish in the break room.

The first time I encountered gumbo was its smell wafting from a microwave in a shared office space. I’m still astonished that anyone could tolerate that smell and actually find it pleasing. It reminded me of when my mom would bring home kimchi from her Korean friends... she reveled in the entire house squirming as she popped open those little jars.

I once bought Limburger cheese as a joke. I was shocked to find that the flavor was delicious and it got totally eaten up at the party I brought it to, after people dared one another to try it and being similarly surprised at the deliciousness.

Same! At this moment I have a Camembert in my fridge that can clear out the room once you open the fridge. Much stronger than Limburger. Also delicious.

I see your German Limburger..with all due respect to Camembert, I raise Livarot aka Le Colonel from Normandy. I expect it to remain uncontested in both the delicious and stinky category.

The Limburger without the rind is a light weight.

Just in case it's helpful, Limburger is a type of [soft] washed rind cheese:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/06/cheese-101-washed-rind.h...

Most washed rind cheeses share fundamental characteristics that resemble Limburger (to me, old barn), in case you're interested in trying others.

I don’t abhor those smells per se, but I hate when they stick to surfaces so everything smells like that. Yes, we could “tolerate” them, but why should we? If it were for short periods of time, sure, I guess, but long-term? There are less aggressive, more pleasant and soothing smells to enjoy

Half of the listed smells of old Paris are hardly natural smells.

Anyway, I don't think people are being 'delicate'. Instead, as we clean up our act, smaller offenses become comparatively large, and just as noticable. The reverse of nose-blindness. For example, over the years, the cleaner the air in my house the more readily I can discern wildfire smoke on the air.

Most of the time nature is not particularly rank. The smells of pine or grasses or dirt are quite subtle.

> The reverse of nose-blindness.

I had the pleasure to experience this in Paris during the first lockdown which was pretty strict. With the lack of cars on the streets the pale brown smog went away and for the first time in probably a century another smell became perceptible: sulfur.

Always nice to know that behind the fumes there's another thing ruining your lungs, this one was attributed to agricultural pollution.

Fish can smell anywhere from basically nothing (freshly killed fish), to absolutely putrid (surströmming). I don't think there's anything intrinsic in the human condition that we should be used to the smell of rotting fish.

Funnily enough I find the most offensive smells to be way too much perfume, or scented laundry detergent.

Perfume: The Story of Murder is a terrific historical fantasy novel (the movies version is great as well), but I wouldn't take anything it says as fact.

Then again, the Gauls were enthusiastic users of soap 2000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#History

I can't help but think this is intensely exaggerated.

I've spent a lot of time in third-world countries where most people have no access to regular medical care and certainly not dentistry... and there's no stench of rotting teeth.

There aren't smells of spoiled vegetables or rancid cheese or sour milk -- things are left fresh or composted out back or milk turns to yogurt but it doesn't smell.

People may smell if you're within a few inches of them... but you're usually not. And likewise horses can be smelly when you're right next to them.

But if Paris were really that stench-filled, surely there would be third-world places today that are the same? But I've never encountered anywhere anything like that.

Feels like urban legend to me. Just like the myth about how spices were used to mask the smell of rotten meat. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#...

>> surely there would be third-world places today that are the same?

You seem to be implying that modern third world is so far behind so as to resemble 18th century Paris. While I agree with you that the quote in parent seems exaggerated I don't think even a modern very poor country will stink like 18th century London and Paris. 18th century was a time of horse driven transport and little to no sewer system. The main stench would be from those two things which in modern times is mostly absent even in poor third world countries.

Yes there are poor regions which are less developed than 18th century European cities. Many places in the world still do not have refrigeration, running water, electricity, sewers, paved roads, mechanized farming/milling/textile production, etc.

People carry their own water, chop their own firewood, cook over a hearth fire in small hand-made thatched mud huts, make their own furniture, grow their own food (possibly using animals to plough), prepare their own food by hand from scratch, make their own clothing, do their laundry in a stream, poop in the woods or in an outhouse, clean themselves in a sweat bath or with a damp cloth, carry goods from place to place on their backs or in simple unpowered carts, etc.

Though there are fewer and fewer such places as time goes on. For instance rural Mexico has changed dramatically in the past 2 generations.

But those are rural. I knew an old gentleman who lived in St Louis around 1930-1940 and he told me he loved leaving the city to live in the country during the summer to get away from the smell.

Well, you could go to shantytowns in e.g. West Africa, South Asia, or South America if you want an idea of what crowded fast-growing cities are like.

They aren’t precisely “less developed” than 18th century Europe, but they are more crowded and often have comparable hygiene, medical care, etc. Again they often lack basic amenities like running water, sewers, and grid electricity. The biggest difference is probably that many of these have much worse air pollution than anywhere in the 18th century.

Yes, there are many places which smell potent if you are used to living in a wealthy suburb, but the smells are not really like the description above, especially after a week or two of acclimation, except maybe for extraordinarily dainty hypersensitive people. Patrick Süskind is exaggerating for effect.

I'm not sure, air quality was extremely poor in 18th century Europe. The term smog was coined in 1905 (after more than 100 years of deadly smog) in London. https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/dec/09/p...

Exactly. Modern shantytowns are a great comparison, and in terms of smells they're... fine. It's a total non-issue, unless indeed you're "extraordinarily dainty hypersensitive" I suppose maybe.

I'm not sure what air pollution you're referring to though?

Of course. It's from a book called "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer", the whole book is about smells/odors/fragrances of all kinds.

It's a great read.

I really think it has to do with how some places are laid out. When I visited New Orleans the experience was similar to the Paris description in many ways, because the french quarter had like no ventilation with the narrow streets and just reeked of trash and rotting seafood due to all the haphazard dumpster locations in that part of the city. Just poorly laid out and it absolutely reeked, especially when the humidity just lingered in the air.

Modern third-world countries are likely not as densely packed and if they are, they have higher standards of sanitation than even 18th century London. In those days, sanitation and proper plumbing was basically non-existent.

You can go to any city in a developing nation to get a similar experience. I've been in homes where the toilets abut the street and drain directly into an open sewer that runs along the street. Those sewers pool into a "pond" at the end of the street or subdivision.

Then layer on the smells of farming, cooking, heating and animal processing and you get some really dominant odors.

On one trip, my local hosts picked me up at the airport. I spent the ride wondering whether to ask them why the air smelled so incredibly bad. The sharp smells were a mix of sewage and burning flesh. But my hosts were happy, sharing treats with me and excited to have me visit. I felt it would be rude to ask such a question. (Location unnamed.)

Another location was downwind of a sugarcane processing plant. You may think the sweet smell of sugarcane would be all that you would smell. You would be wrong.

Olfactory adaptation set in pretty quickly though. I didn't notice the smells after the first couple of days.

Our "smells" in the modernized west are tame by comparison.

In some countries without sufficient landfill systems, the pervasive smell of burning trash also fills the air...and you also get used to it pretty quick as well.

It's both kind of amazing and kind of expected how quickly we adapt to different sent environments. Humans tend to saturate our ability to smell novel things quickly, which is why it's often hard to track things down by smell -- we quickly lose the ability to smell it.

I grew up like 10-15 miles from a sugar beet processing plant. It smelled like burning garbage when the wind was blowing in the right direction.

> downwind of a sugarcane processing plant

I've come across that smell while on trains or cars, from sugar mills nearby. I've heard it is from bagasse, a waste product of the factory.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse

I've traveled in a lot of developing countries. I imagine many of the smells I've encountered in small cities are the same as they've been for centuries or even millenia. The most prominent smells are sewage (from open sewers and natural waterways loaded with sewage); agricultural (manure from both farms and from animals still used in transport); and burning garbage (still common in many rural developing areas). The biggest shift is likely the replacement of manure from transport animals (horses, oxen, etc.) with unregulated exhaust from transport (trucks to be sure, but primarily from two-cycle engines on small motorcycles and tuk-tuks). I can't imagine what a large metropolis would have smelled like before sewage was largely contained and before internal combustion engines replaced animals.

speaking of manure big cities in the not so distant past:

> in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great...

I was a little disappointed with this article. Didn't really have too much of substance, but I love the concept of it.

Personal anecdote, being a Polish-American, I've experienced the vast difference in smell landscape the article talks about. For whatever the reason, Polish culture loves flowers. You look up Polish artwork, folk dress, whatever, flowers, EVERYWHERE. Man, woman, doesn't matter. Flowers. The god damn lace curtains aren't curtains without flowers. Houses needed actual flowers too... or it's not a house. Same with Christmas. Americans are fine with fake trees. Every Pole and Polish-American I know and have known, a fake tree is a step towards Satanism. It's just... no. Christmas isn't Christmas without the smell of a tree. That and our cooking methods are vastly different from standard American foods. More earthy smells due to root veg and mushroom dishes. That gets ingrained into the walls.

I'm going to assume this was due to the prevalence of horse shit and dumping human shit outside so much back in the hay-day. Which does make sense since in the medieval era there was a large time period of thought that disease was carried by fowl smelling scents. By that logic, they would try making homes smell as nice as possible... plus horse shit stinks. That's good enough reason alone.

So all of this is so ingrained in me, American homes aren't homes without some sort of earthy smell to them. The plastic, corporate smell is your normal US home (not all, plenty do like having plants inside... just not enough people do this) with their fake candles and air fresheners. It's an "empty" smell is the best I've ever been able to describe it. While a house with actual flowers or plants gives it a "fuller" or "lived in" smell. Obviously this is all due to personal experience and how I was raised, but I can't stand buildings that don't have a few plants growing inside of it. I swear I can instantly tell, without seeing it, that there's a plant inside of a house. Even if it's not fragrant. Personally the whole "spices" thing is... eh. Nothing wrong with the smells, just they get annoying or boring after a while. Seems like that's more of a Western Europe thing.

Anyways, I learned my mood is loosely tied to the long term smells I'm around. I get a bit... agitated? More annoyed I think is the better term, when around the fake, empty smells. Outside or in a building with plants growing in it, I'm fine or just never really noticed. How much that's just me being crazy, I don't know. Like I said, anecdote.

i enjoy this anecdote :) i'm american, grew up in a forest, moved to cities 6 years ago, and i get exactly what you mean by the "empty" smell. entire buildings that reek of (what i presume are) building materials offgassing. one nice thing about early COVID is when everyone stopped driving briefly and you could smell fresh sweet spring air in a downtown.

There's only 2 things I miss since leaving the Pacific Northwest, the forests and the mountains. It's hard to beat mountain forest air.

Have you seen the NASA study on indoor plants and filtration? Highly recommend it. The degree to which it's effective on a home scale... eh... Still, it doesn't hurt to do. Again, I could be crazy, but having a few of these in a city environment does drastically change the smell of a house for the better.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19930073077

I do recommend searching "nasa indoor plant list" for easier lists if you just want to quickly see which ones.

Many of the popular conclusions drawn from the NASA study are not actually supported by the study:

https://www.gardenmyths.com/garden-myth-born-plants-dont-pur...

Wow, thanks for that link. Literally all the conclusions were exaggerated.

i think it would be best to optimize roughly for emitted VOCs as opposed to absorbed VOCs, if the thought is that the plants are putting good things into the air!

NASA studies of common houseplants show that they do a great deal of air cleaning, removing noxious industrial chemicals and pollutants from the air. Spider plants, for example, excel at this. So, it isn't your imagination. Science has measured differences in indoor air quality caused by houseplants.

Unfortunately, this is a myth. Too many plants are needed to make any appreciable difference.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/indoor-p...

https://www.gardenmyths.com/garden-myth-born-plants-dont-pur...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/houseplan...

Wolverton understood these issues, his later designs centered around driving air past plants root systems to increase their uptake by orders of magnitude. Of course it is a myth that any normal houseplant is going to make a big difference, but I'm not so sure about a fan/roots system enhanced version.

One other modification was to include activated carbon, which muddies the water a bit but the idea generally speaking is that the bacterial colonies that are managed/symbiotes of the root system can assist with the uptake of VOCs. Activated carbon was supposed to be a temporary sink while that process takes place.

Now a fan enhanced plant that survives the airflow required is not trivial, and not what people think of when they think "this plant will help my house" but its not so simple as "this whole idea is stupid". The original and follow-on research is more interesting to me than the 'debunks' which are lazy in that they just take the easy case (add plants to clean your air!) and refute it.

The most amazing thing that some of the original research shows is that the bacterial colonies get _better_ at consuming household vocs, implication that the food source shapes those colonies specifics.

I'm not totally convinced, but I think its more interesting than the debunk articles allow for. I think it needs more study.

In India, women wear flowers in their hair..strings of jasmine rose magnolia tuberose marjoram...I have often wondered if its because of the BO of all those around ..but also for the stench arising from all the heat and humidity. Sweating is encouraged. In our climate, sweating is a quick way to keep cool.

I visited a beautifully restored and maintained castle in Northern Germany not long ago.

After the tour, as I was walking through the courtyard, I noticed out the corner of my eye what appeared to be a pile of horse manure.

On closer inspection it was actually steel statue of a pile of horse manure, put there as a reminder of what would have covered the courtyard in its heyday.

One thing I've always wondered about is what other worlds smell like. Currently we only know two, Earth and the moon [0]. It seems like something that would actually be a real big human factor but is completely glossed over in stories if it isn't about the planet smelling terrible and more a foreshadowing element (I do remember reading one story where it was mentioned in a casual but I forgot which one).

[0] https://www.space.com/26932-moon-smell-apollo-lunar-aroma.ht...

This[1] article mentions a lab at ASU - might be of interest (I didn't explore it).

I wonder if there's a market for a "scratch and sniff" astronomy children's book?

There's also a smell on ISS EVA suits upon repressurization. Last I heard, the mechanism was unclear.

There was a "smell of space" perfume kickstarter[2], and then "of moon", but IIRC both were working from descriptions rather than chemistry.

I saw someone ask, what would a Falcon 9 first stage smell/taste like after it landed. It reminded me that most science education content is very sensorially impoverished. Elsewhere, someone reported their half-century-ago geology professor, as emphasizing that you should bring all your senses to bear, and taste your rocks.

Material sensory properties ("smooth vs rough", etc) are taught in Kindergarten. But the descriptive ontologies are ad hoc, so I've wondered what leverage might be obtained by swapping in something more principled from industry. So what about about smell? Either in the spirit of material properties, or more "artist's eye for color", or music appreciation?

[1] https://astronomy.com/news/2018/07/outer-space-smells [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eaudespace/what-does-ou...

A: Let trash pile-up in the streets and remove your sink p-trap. More history here: http://www.sewerhistory.org/time-lines/tracking-down-the-roo...

I love that the picture of the top is of smelling a book. I love book smell. Although books are heavy, there's a definite smell to libraries that I think calms me right down. I miss that smell these days.

Why do you miss it? Don't you own any books? Or do you live somewhere where libraries are closed because of an overreaction to COVID?

I do own books, and there's the individual smell of each book, but I think not having enough books to have a library, there's something missing from the mingling of scents of books. Right now I'm just happy using the electronic resources of my amazing library.

In the old coastal town of Lamu, Kenya that is inundated by donkeys, you get a rough idea of what a town full of horses and fish smells like. The air is filled with an almost oppressive smell of poop and fish. It is unquestionably unpleasant. In some other towns, you are reminded of the smell of exhaust from old trucks belching pollution into the air. And lest you forget, you'll be reminded of a modern western construct - deodorant.

Go to a stable. Horses urinate and defecate at will. They dont normally shower or brush their teeth. There is a smell, but its not punch you in the face bad. Humans can smell really bad on all fronts, but noseblindness is a thing and probably for this reason. You really only smell exaggerated odor after a few minutes. When I was a student at Texas A&M I worked for the on campus car rental agency. The worst place on campus was the chicken refuse area, and it smelled bad- like mile away bad. Even there, you would stop smelling it after a few minutes only to catch a wiff or two a few hours later. Point being, it probably smelled awful, but not for long.

Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25369840

I remember this article because I commented there too and didn’t find it here.

I wonder if anybody uses smell as a mnemonic device when studying. Anybody have any examples of doing this themselves? It seems that since smell is so closely linked to memory we should be taking advantage of this.

Coffee

The smell of excrement has the chemical signature of ‘indole’ and it’s also present in jasmine. The fragrance of jasmine is ..how can I say this..I can only say it like this..borderline narcotic to me. I can never have enough. Poop..not so much.

Another interesting smell is that of truffle mushrooms. They sell for $2000-3600/lb. in the past, the French used female pigs to dig them out of the earth because it was intoxicating for them..it smelt like the scent of a horny male pig’s pheromones. But the pigs would gorge them before the truffle hunter can get to them. Now ..we use dogs. Terriers don’t care much for rutting male pigs.

However, the aroma of a ripe white truffle will have any gourmand worth his/her salt swooning. I remember saving enough money to buy a nugget of Italian white truffle. Trifola Alba[1] for what was an obscene amount of money considering that I had to save to buy it. I had it with fluffy omelette and saved it in a bowl of risotto rice to stretch it. My plan was to have a nice creamy white truffle fettuccine and then the perfumed risotto would also be a treat. I intended to stretch that little nugget as far as I could and hoped I would have enough for a grilled sandwich too.

I did my research and found that a bottle of sweet Hungarian Tokay[2] would suit my menu which included a foie pate and a potato galette with goose fat and garlic.

But I didn’t have enough money. I was living in expensive central London W1 at this time and working in a restaurant and attending culinary school. So I walked everywhere, lived on mcD fries and strawberry milkshakes to save enough for the Tokaji.

After about a week, I gather my supplies and come to my room that I rented only to find the door ajar. The landlady was standing outside and she was so mad. The cleaning woman had pulled out everything I ever owned and was under the bed.

She had come to clean and she thought there was a dead rodent in the room. The raw milk Camembert that had been ripening in the window sill as part of the menu was the culprit. I calmed her down and threw the offending cheese out.

I did have my dinner for one sans Camembert. And as a peace offering, I gave the bowl of perfumed risotto rice to my landlady with the remaining nub of truffle. We were friends again.

But what is so magical about truffles? It lingers inside your nostrils long after you have had your fill. I did..for almost a week and I can beckon it on demand now when I am feeling particularly nostalgic. Is it a brain signal that gets triggered? Is it some kind of hard wired smell code that just have to be uncovered because it’s of the earth. It feels so ‘ancient’ and ‘prehistoric’ as though this old fungus is some silent hidden part of your DNA. I don’t feel that way about all other mushrooms tho’..maybe it’s because it’s rare and expensive. Entirely psychological. Or maybe it’s personal because I created a memory and story around it.

I have no idea..but if you ever have had truffle..black or white..you’d know what I mean.

How does a truffle smell.. [...] The smell of good truffles has been historically hard to describe, with comparisons ranging from mold to sweet body odor to sulphurous garlic. The fact is, it isn't really the fungus itself that is all that tasty, but rather the gas it gives off, part of which is produced by the fungi themselves and part of which is produced by bacteria and microbes living within. One major component is the molecule androstenone, described as having an aroma somewhere between sandalwood, vanilla and urine. Androstenone is also produced by randy male pigs, which is why female pigs make such good truffle hunters.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_truffle

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaji

Picture Manhattan over several centuries. Odoriferous streets strewn with garbage, and excrement, and carcasses. Feeding masses of free-roaming pigs. Winters were colder then, so waste accumulated over the winter, frozen solid. Now imagine the weeks, after the spring thaw, until the pigs caught up with their sanitation backlog. Even for people of the time, it was thought remarkable.

The best old-time country smell is fresh hey in a barn. The worst modern country smell is the corporate pig farm.

I visited ancient Pompeii about a decade ago. The roads were basically open sewers. Nice. There were stepping stones at regular intervals so that you could cross from one side of the pavement to the other. There stones were spaced so that the wheels of a horse-drawn cart could travel unimpeded.

Disappointed! Thought we were going to talk about the new riddle of induction's grue and bleen only for smells. Like what if something smells like garbage before time t and delicious food after time t.

Horse poop.

Horse manure is pleasant in comparison to any of what a city would have smelled like.

I grew up in rural Ontario and the eminent smell of horse manure is a surefire sign that spring has sprung. It smells like home!

I'm going to agree with you to a degree. I used to live a mile or two from an organic sheep farm in Oregon. On overcast days and the wind went my direction, it wasn't that bad. I wouldn't say pleasant. But it was just the strong smell of cut grass with odd components to manure that weren't that bad.

However, on a clear, hot summer day and the wind came my direction... no. Add in where it rained a lot the day before... those were the days when I felt like it was time to have a massive lamb and mutton BBQ party to make sure I don't smell it again.

Though, still better than smelling your average public toilet. So yea. Somewhat agree.

The horse manure in the streets would have been one of the more pleasant aromas compared to the human feces and urine smells everywhere, the dog urine and feces smells everywhere, the rotting garbage, etc.

I'm laughing and terrified of the fact we are all talking about what shit on the street is better smelling. I'm still going to ultimately defer to none as default before picking and choosing. And yes, I can foresee horse shit as being the preferred out of everything else... which again... terrifying.

I'll have to defer that one to you, for sure.

I've been back in Toronto for about ten years now so my view of the countryside I grew up in is definitely through some rose-coloured lenses.

(I'm graciously moving somewhere smaller, but not quite back where I grew up soon and am deeply looking forward to it—smells and all)

I’d imagine the worst block of NYC during trash day in peak summer heat.. but much worse :-)

Teen Spirit?

Off-topic: but why does nautil.us still on unsecured HTTP?

What did the 1960s smell like? Nicotine.

That and the distinctive, also pleasant yet carcinogenic smell of chlorinated solvents.

Scent plays a central role in our everyday life, even acting as a powerful time machine into our own past with its ability to spark long-forgotten memories. But it's also a key tool in telling the stories of others.

Not sure why you got downvoted.

Also see:

You Can’t Stop Touching Your Face Because You’re Subconsciously Sniffing Your Hands

You might not realize it, but you’re constantly smelling your own hands to learn about the people and world around you

https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/you-can-...

Kid has tv remote in mouth constantly.

I guess she’s tasting her tv shows.

migraines periodically give me Extreme heightened senses.

For sense of smell. It’s truly amazing how much “detail” there is in every day scents. Can smell food and describe accurately the spices used. Also I can detect the tiniest amounts used from 20 feet away. Shocking people that are using it and don’t even smell it.

My personal favorite is a woody car smell Hanger in the car caused me to instantly be jealous. Not of anyone specific, but there is an intense primal feeling of someone after what’s mine.

Without migraine I don’t notice any of it.

I used to have the same kind of migraines. So much sharp smells everywhere, smell people across the street, things like that. Sadly headache didn't allow to enjoy that superability, even for normally pleasant smells.

It’s truly a horrible experience.

There is fantasy series “Mist Born” where one character has enhanced senses. All the pluses and minuses that goes with it.

Wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Well maybe perfume manufacturers.

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