I loved this book when I first read it.

I’m loving it even more now :o)

Attempting to put the sense of smell on the historical map, the author of this book conveys the power that smells – from the seductress’s civet to the ubiquitous excremental odours of city cesspools – exercized over the lives (and deaths) of Frenchmen in the 18th and 19th centuries. Integrating a range of disciplines – the histories of science and medicine, urban studies, public health, psychohistory, and literary criticism – the work lays bare the deeper implications of smell for science, society, and literature.