Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Rebecca Shulman

  • The basest of the senses: medical unease with the sense of smell

    Rebecca ShulmanPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States “…the primitive organ of smell, the basest of the senses” – Patrick Suskind, Perfume For the past two centuries, the medical profession has had a deeply-held but wholly unconscious ambivalence about the sense of smell, including the myriad ways in which it can become disordered. The same ambivalence does not…