The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination
This is a fascinating but difficult book, rooted in the commitment to "total" history pioneered by the French Annales school. Highly original and interdisciplinary, it discusses the development of Western attitudes about smell: changing theories about odors and their meaning. The author, a French history professor, traces modern attitudes to the public health movement of 18th-century France, where scientists studying the chemistry of air campaigned against the dangers of odoriferous slaughterhouses, cesspoools, swamps, corpses, and prisons. Various changes in behavior resulted: new theories about perfume, rituals of bodily hygiene, and polite revulsion at the "stinking" urban masses. For specialists in history, literature, and medicine. Marie Marmo Mullaney, History Dept., Caldwell Coll., N.J.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.