Smell Detectives – An Olfactory History of Nineteenth–Century Urban America

Smell DetectivesAn Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America\nAuthor(s): Melanie A. Kiechle, Paul S. Sutter, Paul S. Sutter\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: University of Washington Press, United States\nImprint: University of Washington Press\nISBN-13: 9780295741932, 978-0295741932\nSynopsis\nWhat did nineteenth-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the nineteenth-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary challenges caused by rapid urban and industrial growth. Melanie Kiechle examines nuisance complaints, medical writings, domestic advice, and myriad discussions of what constituted fresh air, and argues that nineteenth-century city dwellers, anxious about the air they breathed, attempted to create healthier cities by detecting and then mitigating the most menacing odors.\nMedical theories in the nineteenth century assumed that foul odors caused disease.