Scents and sensibility: our centuries-long love affair with olfaction
As the last year has given us a new-found appreciation for the ability to smell, we pay homage to this most transformative of senses
It has been described as the Cinderella of the senses, sitting quietly and largely overlooked until suddenly needed and often taken for granted because of its unshowy reliability. In a UK survey in 2019 most adults ranked smell as the least important of the senses. Unlike the Big Two – sight and hearing – which regularly malfunction and cause all manner of trouble, the olfactory nerve just gets on with the job.
Even the word ...
