I’ve been reading lately about the complexities involved in understanding one’s sense of smell. Exposures over time to different odors can affect how individuals experience scents in the present. Some smells are undetectable to some people while eliciting strong reactions from others.

Researchers theorize that the smells one grows up with may affect how odors are processed. A dairy farm childhood might elicit fond memories of the smell of cattle manure that differs considerably from that of someone who grew up in the city, whose exposure to the same smell recalls dog excrement stepped in on the sidewalk. Experiencing, assigning quality to odors depends not only on the health of the olfactory receptacles one’s nose contains but also on the variety of scents one has experienced in the past and the psychological baggage that goes with those memories.

I wonder what sort of mindset medieval city dwellers had dealing with the smells of chamber pot content poured from windows, horse excrement in the streets and the flow of human waste through town gutters.

I’ll bet a trip to the country was a breath of fresh air.