Tag: smell
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The sweet smell of success
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “You shall nose him . . .”— Hamlet, Act IV, scene III It was July 1977. After having done a rotating internship, I was starting my pediatric residency at the academic children’s hospital. My first rotation was in the outpatient clinic, an old, run-down building a few blocks from the main hospital.…
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That hospital smell
Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States What smells good to you? Do you know why? To many people smell seems of little significance, yet it is a powerful sense, having evolved earlier than the more complex senses of sight and hearing.1, 2 Smell is unique in how it is processed, being first detected by neurons which…
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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…