Smells. Robert Muchembled

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together in white wine, then distilling the result. Some people were content simply with a morning purge of two or three glasses of cow urine for ten days every spring and autumn.20 Meat, milk, dung and urine – cows really are man’s best friend! In 1755, Polycarpe Poncelet, a Recollet monk and keen agronomist, published a recipe for a cheap and excellent liqueur that simply required distilling a ripe cow pat in brandy. It is unlikely that the smell and taste would go down well with modern consumers … yet Poncelet was by no means joking: he was very keen to prove the health-giving properties of such liqueurs and the harmony of their flavours. Unfortunately, he neglected to mention where his delightful cow-pat-based drink came in his own theory of a correspondence between the ‘delicious music’ of the seven full notes and the ‘seven primitive flavours’: acid, piquant, insipid, sweet, bitter, bittersweet and austere.21

      It was even relatively common practice for farmers to sneak in overnight and steal night soil from the dumps where it was left to dry out, despite warnings from agronomists who were of the firm belief that using fresh excrement as fertilizer gave fruit and vegetables a foul smell. However, the rural population resisted pressure and obstinately refused to use the stinking sludge from various sources stocked in separate dumps, though the source was ten times larger than the city’s holdings of excrement in three permanent dumps that survived until 1779. These were estimated to have taken in 27,000 cubic metres of sewage in 1775 alone. The sewage dumps in Faubourg Saint-Germain and Faubourg Saint-Marceau had been moved some four kilometres out of town back in 1760, the aim being to avoid ‘foul air’ contaminating the foodstuffs transported through the vicinity, including fresh bread baked in Gonesse, north-east of the city. A further aim was to avoid visitors arriving in Paris from being assailed by a terrible stench. The third such dump, in Montfaucon near Buttes-Chaumont (now a park in north-east Paris), was the only one still in service in 1781. It had had a terrible reputation since the days of the late medieval poet François Villon, who wrote of the rows of hanged bodies dangling from the gallows there. Its ten hectares of cesspits full of fermenting sewage and its slaughterhouse piled high with rotting carcases could almost have been something out of Dante’s Inferno.

      Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714), professor of medicine at the Universities of Modena and later Padua, published De Morbis Artificum Diatriba [On the Diseases of Workers] in 1700.24 Reprinted with additional material in 1713, the book proved a major success, being translated into numerous languages; Ramazzini’s role as the founder of modern occupational health is a subject of some debate in specialist circles.

      He explained that the idea for the book first came to him while watching night soil men at work in his home, basing his research on direct observation and theoretical inquiry. He noted that all trades were associated with specific ailments, studying over fifty trades and their health issues. Some diseases had physical causes such as heat, cold or damp, for instance in glass workers, bakers and brick makers. Others stemmed from lengthy, violent or irregular efforts or repetitive postures affecting the body. Polluted workspaces could also have a deleterious effect on the health of those working there. The colours and substances used by painters, such as red lead, cinnabar, Venice lead, varnishes, walnut and linseed oil and so on, caused a ‘foul, latrinal smell’ in their studios, eventually killing off their sense of smell altogether – though they may have sought consolation in their superior eyesight. Those making wines and spirits became drunk on the fumes of their produce. Apothecaries also suffered from the harmful effects of the preparations they handled. Ramazzini advised them to drink vinegar for the good of their health when making laudanum. Other doctors made considerable use of vinegar during outbreaks of plague, as it was thought to neutralize the corrupt air causing contagion. Pleasant smells could also have harmful effects: apothecaries

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