Up: [[Savour]] Created: 2023-10-02 Updated: 2025-01-06 ## Factoids It’s a myth to use coffee beans to clear your nose. Smell the crook of your elbow because that is your own smell. (Rubin) Fruity and citrus are totally different. (Rubin) All smells fall into categories. The categories are: - minty (peppermint) - floral (roses) - ethereal (pears) - musky (musk) - resinous (camphor) - foul (rotten eggs) - acrid (vinegar) (Ackerman) We can only smell something if it’s volatile enough to spray microscopic particles into the air. That’s why stone, glass, and steel don’t have a smell, at least not at room temperature. (Ackerman) This one amazes me. Nero, the emperor, was so into roses that at one dinner he had silver pipes installed under each plate , so that the guests could be spritzed with the scent of roses between courses. At another, he spent $160,000 on roses that showered down on dinner guests when the ceiling opened up. One guest smothered to death. (Ackerman) Each person’s odour is as individual as their fingerprint. A dog can identify it easily and can recognize their owner even within a pair of identical twins. (Ackerman) Body odours can be used to help diagnose diseases. The sweat of schizophrenics smells different from that of non-schizophrenics. (Ackerman) To make a beautiful fragrance, it’s often necessary to add some bad-smelling notes. (Rubin) Our nostrils smell differently. They differ significantly in how fast they suck in air. (Rubin) The olfactory region is at the upper end of your nostrils. It’s a yellow, moist, fatty substance. The deeper the shade of yellow, the keener and more intense your sense of smell. Your particular shade of yellow is inherited from your parents. But regardless of how great your sense of smell, it’s light yellow compared to, for example, a fox (reddish-brown) or a cat (mustard brown). (Ackerman) Women have a stronger sense of smell than men. (Ackerman) It’s estimated that we can detect more than one trillion different scents. (Farb & Segal) Our sense of smell weakens as we get older. It’s at its peak at middle age. (Ackerman) Smell and memory are located close to each other in the brain. This is why smells so often trigger memories. (Farb & Segal) It’s also why Alzheimer’s patients so often lose their sense of smell along with their memory. (Ackerman) ## Try - Try to describe a scent that you experience (Rubin) - Pause to notice all the smells you can detect (Rubin) - Five five things to smell, familiar and unfamiliar. In addition to naming it, try to add a personal association. (Rubin) ## See Also - [[Astrology Scents]] > [!user] Sources > Gretchen Rubin, *Life in Five Senses* > Norman Farb and Zindel Segal, *Better in Every Sense* > Diane Ackerman, *A Natural History of the Senses*