The Nose Knows: The Sense of Smell in American History

Abstract

Most Americans live in a very different olfactory world from that of Americans in the past. In many nineteenth-century cities, raw sewage flowed in nearby waterways, garbage was piled high in the streets, horses left immense amounts of manure in their tracks, and numerous factories engaged in the odorous slaughtering and processing of animals. In rural areas some farmers used human feces—known as night soil—imported from city privies and cesspools as fertilizer for crops sold back to urbanites.1 Smells that many people today would consider intolerable were once unavoidable and ubiquitous. It is not that most Americans now inhabit an odorless world; rather, technology can now eliminate or mask odors deemed unpleasant and engineer aromas deemed agreeable. Supermarkets are stocked with deodorants and air fresheners, while department store cosmetic counters overflow with perfumes in any scent imaginable, from delicate florals to spicy musks. Although industrial odors, like those from chemical plants or oil refineries, are difficult to disguise, people have the power to change the smell of their bodies and many indoor areas almost instantaneously by simply spritzing fragrance stored in a bottle or plugging a deodorizer into an electrical outlet.