Table Of ContentDiscovering Odors
Series Editor
Marie-Christine Maurel
Discovering Odors
Gérard Brand
First published 2019 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947394
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ISBN 978-1-78630-521-3
Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Chapter 1. Dr. Følling’s Flair: Discovery of
Phenylketonuria by Smell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2. A Nobel Prize for the Nose and
Retraction in Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Chapter 3. Sperm and Lily of the Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Chapter 4. Vibrational Theory and the Astonishing
Story of Researcher Luca Turin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Chapter 5. The Famous Madeleines: The Proust
Phenomenon, a Scientific Spoliation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Chapter 6. The Smell of Rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Chapter 7. The Neanderthal Nose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Chapter 8. Mr. and Mrs. Kallmann Have a Son:
When Losing Your Nose and Losing Your Gonads
Go Hand in Hand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 9. Whiplash, or Losing Your Sense of
Smell Following a Head Injury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
vi Discovering Odors
Chapter 10. Phantom Odors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Chapter 11. These Odors That Make Your Head Hurt . . . . . . 41
Chapter 12. The Sleeper’s Nose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Chapter 13. Surströmming: The Worst Odor
in the World? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Chapter 14. It Smells Like Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Chapter 15. What Fennel Reveals to Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Chapter 16. Mustard Goes Up My Nose and
Onions Make Me Cry: Discovering a
Third Unknown Chemical Sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Chapter 17. Lavender at the Dentist:
Aromatherapy, a Myth or a Reality? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Chapter 18. Catnip and Pregnant Women:
Some Variations in Sensitivity to Odors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Chapter 19. If You Eat Too Much Fat, You Will
Lose Your Sense of Smell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Chapter 20. Experts’ Noses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Chapter 21. Filled with Smells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Chapter 22. Obesity and Chocolate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Chapter 23. The Nose on the Plate:
A Difficult Scientific Consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Chapter 24. The Smell of a Hot Croissant:
When Our Sense of Smell Nibbles Away
at Our Free Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Chapter 25. The Dog That Sniffs Out Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Contents vii
Chapter 26. Smells to Cure Cancer? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Chapter 27. A Depressed Patient’s Nose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Chapter 28. Gogol’s Nose or “Empty Nose” Syndrome . . . . 109
Chapter 29. She Smells Parkinson’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Chapter 30. And What Does Parkinson’s Smell Like? . . . . . 117
Chapter 31. Alzheimer’s Nose: Losing Sense of
Smell and Losing Memory, the Same Story? . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Chapter 32. The Smell of Old People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Chapter 33. The Smell of Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Chapter 34. Red Meat, Garlic and Sex Appeal . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Chapter 35. Tears and Desire: Stop Crying,
it Doesn’t Turn Me On Anymore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Chapter 36. With a Bad Nose, Comes a Poor Flirt . . . . . . . . 141
Chapter 37. It’s All in the Sweat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Chapter 38. The Smell of Fear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chapter 39. What Epigenetics Owes to the Nose:
How Fear Learned From an Odor can be
Transmitted to Offspring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Chapter 40. Odor and Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Chapter 41. Odorology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Chapter 42. On the Trail of Odors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Chapter 43. The Electronic Nose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
viii Discovering Odors
Chapter 44. The Plane Nose: The Methods of
the Fraunhofer-Institut für Bauphysik
to Get Up in the Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Chapter 45. The Gender of the Nose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Chapter 46. The Newborn’s Nose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Chapter 47. The Smell of a Handshake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Chapter 48. The Nose and Perfumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Chapter 49. Odors… A Hobby? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Chapter 50. Tell Me What You Smell, I’ll Tell You
Who You Are, But Not Where You Come From:
On Genetic Variations in Odor Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
