The big cities were stinky.
From Knowable Magazine, January 28:
Using chemistry, archival records and AI, scientists are reviving the aromas of old libraries, mummies and battlefields
We often learn about the past visually — through oil paintings and sepia photographs, books and buildings, artifacts displayed behind glass. And sometimes we get to touch historical objects or listen to recordings. But rarely do we use our sense of smell — our oldest, most primal way of learning about the environment — to experience the distant past.
Without access to odor, “you lose that intimacy that smell brings to the interaction between us and objects,” says analytical chemist Matija Strlič. As lead scientist of the Heritage Science Laboratory at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia and previously deputy director of the Institute for Sustainable Heritage at University College London, Strlič has devoted his career to interdisciplinary research in the field of heritage science. Much of his work focused on the preservation and reconstruction of culturally significant scents.
Reconstructed scents can enhance museum and gallery exhibits, says Inger Leemans, a cultural historian at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Smell can provide a more inviting entry point, especially for uninitiated visitors, because there’s far less formalized language for describing smell than for interpreting visual art or displays. Since there’s no “right way” of talking about scent, she says, “your own knowledge is as good as the others’.”
Despite their potential to enrich our understanding of history and art, smells are rarely conserved with the same care as buildings or archaeological artifacts. But a small group of researchers, including Strlič and Leemans, is trying to change that — combining chemistry, ethnography, history and other disciplines to document and preserve olfactory heritage.
Some projects aim to safeguard a beloved smell before it disappears. When the library in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral was scheduled for renovation, for example, Strlič and his UCL colleague Cecilia Bembibre set about documenting the historic library’s distinct smell.
The team first analyzed the chemicals wafting from the collection, which includes books dating back to the 12th century, and the surrounding furnishings, which have barely changed since the library was completed in 1709. They used a process called gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, which helps separate, identify and quantify volatile organic compounds, to examine air samples they’d captured in the library.
“As an analytical chemist, I was able to characterize and quantify those molecules, but how people describe what they felt required a completely different approach,” says Strlič. To whittle down the list of compounds identified by the mass spectrometer to the ones that humans can actually smell, the researchers next invited seven untrained “sniffers” into the cathedral library and asked them to describe its smell using a list of 21 adjectives commonly used to describe the compounds.
The list included words like green and fatty, which people frequently use to describe the smell of the chemical hexanal, and almond, which is associated with benzaldehyde. Both compounds are released by paper as it degrades. The sniffers were also invited to add any descriptors of their own.
One word that all sniffers used to describe the library wasn’t particularly surprising: woody. Others that proved popular were smoky, earthy and vanilla. Such descriptors can help conservators assess the state of old paper, since papers that are slightly more acidic due to decay, for example, “smell more sweet,” says Strlič. “And those that are stable smell more like hay.”
Strlič and colleagues next matched the qualitative descriptors the sniffers had selected with their underlying chemical compounds to create a chemical “recipe” for the scent of the cathedral’s library. Such recipes are published in scientific journals and stored in digital research repositories, so a chemist could theoretically whip up the smell of old books centuries from now, “even if, in the future, people no longer go to a library or no longer read physical books, and only receive all information digitally,” says Strlič.
How musty are mummies?....
....MUCH MORE
Previous malodorous musings:
"The past stinks – a brief history of smells"
Now There's Vomitoxin In the Corn
Great."Too hot? In 1858 a heatwave turned London into a stinking sewer"
Along with cadaverine and putrescine this is one of the most perfectly named of Mother Nature's offerings.
It does exactly what is said on the tin.
If you can get pigs to eat grain that has the chemical on it, well you can guess what happens.
Long Hot Summers
Between 1500 and 1900 Paris went from 8th largest city in the world with a population of around 185,000 to 3rd largest in the world with a population of, depending on how far out from the city center you measured, 2.7 to 3.6 million.
Back in the day those big cities were aromatic, see the first link below, if interested.
Related:
"When Paris’s Streets Were Paved With Filth"
Faux Paris
"What Makes Paris Look Like Paris?"
And probably related:
Things I Did Not Know: Sebaceous Cyst Edition (or: how to write about really bad smells)