Robert Muchembled

Why is our sense of smell so under-appreciated? We tend to think of smell as a vestigial remnant of our pre-human past, doomed to gradual extinction, and we go to great lengths to eliminate smells from our environment, suppressing body odour, bad breath and other smells. Living in a relatively odour-free environment has numbed us to the importance that smells have always had in human history and culture.<br /> <br /> In this major new book Robert Muchembled restores smell to its...