Humans Have Fought Bad Smells for Millennia; Perfume Began as Smoke Burned for the Gods
Perfume did not begin as luxury or pleasure, but as religious incense and disease prevention — Europeans believed foul air spread disease, so they walled themselves in with scent.
The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
Ambergris comes from a battle inside a whale
The episode opens with a very concrete image to explain where ambergris comes from: a sperm whale swallows a giant squid, the squid's hard beak lodges in the whale's intestine, gets coated in a mysterious bile secretion and expelled, then drifts in ocean currents for decades before washing ashore. Apothecaries buy it by gold weight, grind it into a fixative, and use it to control how fast a scent evaporates, so the fragrance shifts slowly over a whole day. The image shows how absurdly long the raw-material chain of perfume can be — behind one scent is a deep-sea struggle and decades of drifting on the currents.
Smell is the most emotional sense
The episode offers a judgment: by some measures, smell is the most emotional sense, because it connects directly to the brain's memory center. Research shows that recalling a smell evokes memory more strongly than visualizing one. Host Rob says his earliest memory is grabbing the rope seat of a lounge chair on Oahu's North Shore while learning to walk — what he remembers is not the image but the smell of that old rope fiber soaked in sea-salt air. The other host's earliest olfactory memory is the old 1980s-formula Trix cereal. Smell can offend, can give pleasure, can summon the past like a ghost, and is essentially untouchable, changeable, and fleeting.
The earliest perfume was smoke burned for the gods
Ancient perfume's origins were mainly religious, and it was not today's distilled liquid — the earliest was basically smoke produced by burning. Egyptian priests burned specific woods, plants, and resins to make pleasing smoke that both purified the ritual space and served as a channel connecting to the gods. The word perfume comes from the Latin perfumum, meaning "through smoke." In China, Southeast Asia, and Native American communities alike, these fragrances were believed to be vehicles for communicating with deities, carrying prayers and pleas up to heaven or the spirit world. In Asia this developed into an incense-making tradition that largely replaced personal perfume until modern times, because the scent stayed in clothing and rooms.
Ibn Sina invented steam distillation
In the 11th century the Arab scholar Ibn Sina discovered steam distillation: boiling a solid substance in water, collecting the steam, and separating the oil or essence from it. The first things extracted this way were rose water and rose oil, still a mainstay of cosmetic perfume today. Like many chemical, scientific, and mathematical concepts, the method passed in the Middle Ages from Arab to European scholars, and then to Italy, which became Europe's center of perfume manufacturing throughout the Renaissance. The people making perfume then were often alchemists and apothecaries, and the perfumes they made were both drunk as medicine and worn on the body.
Scent was treated as an airborne barrier against disease
Before germ theory, European medical thought rested on miasma theory: foul or bad-smelling air was the main route by which disease spread. In an age without science this was not absurd, because rotting flesh, industrial burning, and contaminated water really did make people sick. So Europeans concluded that inhaling sweet or pleasant air could ward off disease. The upper classes began using nosegays (a small bunch of dried flowers or herbs, held up to the nose when passing bad smells), gentleman's canes topped with containers of aromatic substances, and perfumes worn, drunk, or used to fumigate clothing as protection. Most famous is the plague doctor's mask, its hooked bird beak stuffed with flowers, spices, and herbs.
The Black Death killed the public bathhouse
The Black Death may be the single biggest factor in Europe's adoption of perfume. The plague that swept Europe for three centuries killed off the public bathhouses left over from the Roman Empire, because people believed water was a vehicle of infection. Moral norms then shifted, religious concern about public nudity grew, and bathhouses came to be seen as places for trysts or sex work. People switched to cleaning their hands and faces with damp cloths, and soaking baths became increasingly rare. They began wearing more underclothes to absorb sweat and odor so the garments could be changed and washed. In this environment, not just the upper class but the emerging middle class relied more on perfume, often making it at home from rosemary in the garden or alcohol plus purchased ingredients.
Perfumed gloves set off a political scandal
In the 16th century people usually scented their clothes rather than their bodies, and perfumed gloves, handkerchiefs, and fans were especially popular. The French queen Catherine de Medici brought Italian perfumery traditions to the French court and hired the Italian perfumer Renato Bianco (Master Rene) to blend exclusive scents for her. Legend has it that Master Rene had a secret tunnel connecting his residence to Catherine's bedroom, and that he also served as her poisoner. When Catherine's rival Jeanne III of Navarre died after receiving a pair of perfumed gloves as a gift from Catherine, rumors spread that the gloves had been soaked in poison. Whether the poisoned gloves were real or not, several deaths were reportedly attributed to them, to the point that William Cecil advised the perfume-loving Elizabeth I to refuse any gift of scented clothing.
Grasse shifted from leather tanning to perfume
Catherine de Medici's passion for perfume changed the industry forever. The French city of Grasse realized the flower fields around it made it an ideal place for fragrance manufacturing, and with Catherine's support shifted its economic base from leather tanning to perfume making; the city, and the country as a whole, remains the center of world perfume manufacturing to this day. France began to dominate the spice trade, and the French empire could bring in novel, far-flung ingredients from the Caribbean, Indonesia, India, and China. French perfumers also created the language we use to describe perfume, and the three stages of a scent's evolution: top notes or head notes smelled in the first few minutes, middle notes that can last for hours, and base notes smelled in the evening or the next day. This evolution comes from fixatives controlling evaporation speed, such as ambergris or alcohol, revealing layers of fragrance over time.
We use more fragrance products than at any point in history
By the time of Louis XV, the French court was called the "perfumed court," and nobles competed to wear rare exotic scents like chocolate and jasmine. Visitors were sprayed with perfume before entering, and there was even a perfume fountain. The Revolution did not change the elite's love of fragrance either: Napoleon ordered enormous quantities of eau de cologne, and his wife Josephine consumed just as much. In the 19th century the spread of scented soap meant making perfume was no longer mainly about masking odor but became more a part of the cleaning process. Scientific progress also brought scented and unscented antiperspirants, and the ability to bathe in hot water every day. But the episode offers a counterintuitive conclusion: even though humans as a whole are cleaner than ever before, we actually use more fragrance products than at any point in history.
In their own words · checked verbatim
Because we are all of us defending the walls in the siege of stank.
Actually, the word perfume comes from this practice since it comes from the Latin perfumum or from smoke.
Therefore, they concluded you could ward off disease by inhaling sweet or good-smelling air.
In fact, the Black Death was probably the single greatest factor in European adoption of perfume because while people did try to use aromatics as protective medicine, the wave of plague which swept Europe for three centuries also killed off the communal bathhouses which still existed as a legacy of the Roman Empire.
So with Catherine's support, it switched its economic base from leather tanning to perfumery and the city specifically, as well as the wider country, remains the center of world perfume manufacture to this day.
But yet, even though we humans as a whole are living cleaner than we ever have, we actually use more scented products than ever before in history.
Figures
| Age of the perfume-making site found in Cyprus | 4000 years | 4:04 |
| Age of Assyrian cuneiform tablets | 3200 years ago | 5:06 |
| How long the Black Death swept Europe | three centuries | 9:08 |
| Size of the Omura scent display | about the size of an AirPods Pro charging case | 14:12 |
Glossary
- miasma theory
- The pre-germ-theory European medical belief that foul, bad-smelling air spreads disease.
- ambergris
- A waxy substance formed from secretions in the sperm whale's intestine, used as a perfume fixative.
- nosegay
- A small bunch of dried flowers or herbs, held up to the nose when passing bad smells.
- fixative
- A substance that controls how fast a scent evaporates, letting the fragrance unfold in layers over time.
How to listen
Founders and content creators interested in the history of the senses, the history of consumption, the perfume industry, or the origins of religious ritual; good for the commute.
The last two minutes are a sponsored ad for the Omura scent display and can be skipped.