Breaking Wind is Breaking News

Nothing disrupts the solemn formality (and tedium) of a city council meeting better than an audible fart. This one was captured on video in Medina, Ohio.

[Via Drudge and Fox8 in Cleveland.]

Odor Memory Before Proust: Dr. Thomas and the Bohemian Fruit Boat

Marcel Proust is the official poster boy for odor-evoked memory. As I’ve pointed out before, this is wrong on several levels. First of all, the madeleine episode in Swann’s Way doesn’t describe the magical experience most of us associate with smell memory, namely a vivid, detailed, and instantaneous recollection of the past. Instead, Proust’s narrator struggles to capture a vague emotion and takes several minutes to locate it in time and place.

Secondly, Proust was not the first writer to describe the phenomenon of odor-evoked memory. It was, as I showed in my book, a common theme in American (and French) literature for many decades before the publication of Swann’s Way.

Finally, despite Jonah Lehrer’s fanciful spin, Proust was not a neuroscientist. The notion that he uncovered “an essential truth about the mind that science is only now rediscovering” is lot of baloney. Here’s another reason why: a scientific paper published in 1896—thirteen years before Proust’s novel appeared.

The paper appeared in German in the Journal for the Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs. The author was Dr. Fr. Thomas of Ohrdruf, Germany. From what I can gather, Thomas was a priest with a doctorate in natural science—his specialty was the entomology of mite galls.

In his paper—“A further example of association through a smell sensation as a subconscious intermediary”—Thomas gives a detailed, autobiographical account of an odor-evoked memory. Here’s the key part (with paragraph breaks added):

In the spring of 1861 I was a student in Berlin. My daily route to the University took me along Artilleriestrasse over the Eberts Bridge. One day in the late fall of 1861, as I crossed the bridge fully immersed in thought, there suddenly appeared before me the Hüttenthal Valley near Königstein in the mountains of Saxony, where I had lived for a long time many years earlier, so lifelike in front of my eyes, that I could not understand how the direction of my thoughts could have been changed all at once.

I was in a hurry to be on time for a lecture and so immediately picked up again the broken thread of my earlier thoughts. The next day at the same hour—I had not thought again about this incident since then—the same thing happened! I stopped cold, as the return to this exact same place was simply too remarkable. I took a few steps backward, slowly and concentrating my attention, when the source became clear to me:

Near the bridge was berthed a Bohemian fruit boat, whose owner had his wares for sale in tubs hung on the railing of the bridge, while the boat itself served as a floating supply cellar and living space for its occupant. The Bohemian had brought brown coal with him as cheap heating fuel. The smell of the smoke from this coal, that had also been commonly used in Hüttenthal, had called up/awakened the memory picture to me.

In Gotha and Jena, where I had also lived before 1861, this heating material was not used. To me it was the same smoke smell that had been new to me in the Saxony mountains, and so become an integral part of the total picture of that new world for me, and it was able three years later to call forth this picture again.

Although it appeared in a scientific journal, this account is quite literary and quite “Proustian”: a narrator is initially baffled by the sudden appearance of a forgotten scene; with an effort he eventually recognizes that his memory was triggered by a smell. Unlike Proust, Dr. Fr. Thomas really was a neuroscientist—and not a bad memoirist either. His paper is another reason to take Proust off the pedestal and acknowledge that science nailed odor memory without the help of any novelist.

[Source: Dr. Fr. Thomas, Ein weiteres Beispiel von Assoziation durch eine Geruchsempfindung als unbewuβtes Mittleglied. Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 1896:12:60-61. My thanks to Ernest Sanders for the translation.]

American Smellscapes: Esther Wu Maps Urban Doughnut Aroma

When I lectured along with Stuart Firestein at Purchase College last week, one of my topics was American smellscapes. I spoke about odor mapping, including Gawker’s New York City Subway Smell Map, Japan’s Smell Club, and my mapping of the recent St. Louis Big Stink.

A few days later I got an email from a graphic designer named Esther Wu. A friend of hers had been in the audience and told her about my fascination with smell maps.

For an art school project, Wu decided to graphically display her observations about the smell of a Dunkin’ Donuts shop that she walked past on the way from the subway to the design studio. For a couple of weeks she systematically noted where she detected the aroma as well as the time and weather conditions.

She assembled and visually summarized all this information in a beautifully thought-out graphic. It’s a marvel of concise data display. I’ve posted a fragment of it above and I encourage you to visit her site to view the whole stylish piece.

The lack of visual representations is one of the difficulties in studying the psychology of odor perception. Chemists have models of molecular structure and anatomists can trace the olfactory nerves with dyes. But for smells loose in the real world, psychologists and odor trackers need a compelling visual representation. Esther Wu’s artistic approach is a great starting point.

Perfume Goes Postal with Smelly Stamps

As a kid I used to collect stamps—an appropriately obsessive hobby for a future scientist. Little did I know that my adult preoccupation with smell would intersect with my juvenile philatomania.

Last week, the Slovak Post issued an Easter stamp scented with narcissus. By my count, it’s the twentieth country to issue a scented postage stamp since 1973. That was the year Bhutan came out with a set of floral stamps printed on rose-scented paper. The idea didn’t take the postal world by storm. Nothing happened until 1999 when Brazil issued a set that drew attention to forest fire prevention: the stamps were printed on recycled paper saturated with the scent of burnt wood. In 2001, Brazil celebrated its coffee industry with a design featuring a sprig of coffee cherries, a bag of roasted beans, and a steaming cup of joe; the ink contained a coffee scent that could be released by rubbing.

The following year, New Caledonia pulled a copy cat and issued its own coffee-scented stamps.

In 2004, Brazil used scented stamps to showcase a sweet-smelling native grass called priprioca (Cyperus articulatus) used in perfumery. New Caledonia countered with an odorized, three-stamp set celebrating its sandalwood production.

The Korean post office has gone for scent in a big way, with six different issues (mostly flowers). In 2000, it produced one of the weirdest designs ever: a heart-shaped stamp featuring a cartoonish pink hand displaying the ASL sign for “love” holding a rose (and smelling of . . . rose).

Scenting methods have evolved since Bhutan perfumed the stamp paper—that smell lasted three to five months at best. The current approach is to mix microencapsulated fragrance into the printing ink; the scent is released only when the stamp is rubbed. Done properly, this process preserves the smell for years. The Russian Federation used an offbeat method in its 2003 “Gifts of Nature” series that featured various fruits: it scented the gum on the back side.

By far the most common postal scent is rose: it’s cheap and easy to make. Floral notes such as lily and jasmine are also popular. Among the more unusual fragrance directions are jasmine tea (Hong Kong, 2001), eucalyptus (Great Britain, 2001), cinnamon (Luxembourg, Christmas 2002), chocolate (Switzerland, 2001), and new-mown grass (Australia, 2000).

I think it’s time the U.S. Postal Service joined the party. How about a Boston Tea Party commemorative? Or one for the Washington, D.C. cherry blossom festival? A mint julep scent to celebrate the Kentucky Derby. Why not a series of classic hot rods with scents of burnt rubber, gasoline and asphalt? A firearm series of historic muskets and revolvers with a gunpowder scent would be cool too.

Slumdog Psychophysicist

A week after our Oscar party I get to indulge my own West Coast red carpet fantasies.

The Los Angeles Times just announced the finalists for its 2008 Book Prizes, and What the Nose Knows is nominated for the Science & Technology award.

The nod comes with a plane ticket to the awards ceremony on April 24th where the winners will be announced. It’s also the kickoff for that weekend’s Los Angeles Festival of Books, one of the country’s biggest literary events for the public.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled to be selected. And I’m really looking forward to meeting more of my readers at the Festival.

UPDATE March 3, 2009
More on the 2008 Book Prizes here, and on the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books here.