Smell Detectives

What did nineteenth-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the nineteenth-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary challenges caused by rapid urban and industrial growth. Melanie Kiechle examines nuisance complaints, medical writings, domestic advice, and myriad discussions of what constituted fresh air, and argues that nineteenth-century city dwellers, anxious about the air they breathed, attempted to create healthier cities by detecting and then mitigating the most menacing odors.

Medical theories in the nineteenth century assumed that foul odors caused disease and that overcrowded cities—filled with new and stronger stinks—were synonymous with disease and danger. But the sources of offending odors proved difficult to pinpoint. The creation of city health boards introduced new conflicts between complaining citizens and the officials in charge of the air. Smell Detectives looks at the relationship between the construction of scientific expertise, on the one hand, and “common sense”—the olfactory experiences of common people—on the other. Although the rise of germ theory revolutionized medical knowledge and ultimately undid this form of sensory knowing, Smell Detectives recovers how city residents used their sense of smell and their health concerns about foul odors to understand, adjust to, and fight against urban environmental changes.

Kiechle is Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Tech.Sutter Paul S. :

Paul Sutter is series editor for the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books series. He is professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has published five books, including Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (UWP, 2005) and Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South (Georgia, 2015).Sutter Paul S. :

Paul Sutter is series editor for the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books series. He is professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has published five books, including Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (UWP, 2005) and Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South (Georgia, 2015).

Melanie A. Kiechle is assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech.

"An attractive edition . . . beautifully written, with a flair for the attention-grabbing turn of phrase that is compulsory in sensory studies. The work is also finely illustrated, offering prints from the nineteenth century that are at no occasion superfluous. As environmental history, Smell Detectives is an essential read, offering new contexts for a field in search of freshly radical tones to combat environmental degradation."—Andrew J. Kettler, University of Toronto, Journal of Social History

Sean Munger:

"This book is a highly creative and unusual glimpse into a realm of environmental history that is rarely accessible to modern observers."

Alexandra Kindell:

"Kiechle’s addition to sensory history provides many points to discuss about the people who made the smells that they did not like."

Hsuan L. Hsu:

"Smell Detectives is a brilliant, entertaining book informed by careful archival research. Supplemented by fascinating illustrations, the book navigates a rich and eclectic archive that is frequently obscured when historians overemphasize the perspectives of health experts and government officials. . . . Kiechle's remarkable study opens up productive new questions and lines of inquiry."

"The manner in which individuals, governments, scientists, and various groups dealt and reacted to smells and fresh air issues provide great insight into our culture—what has value, what does not, what makes us sick, what keeps us well. Smell Detectives is a bottom-up history that is necessary to truly grasp the evolution of cities."—Martin V. Melosi, author of The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present

"Phew! The nineteenth century was smelly! From stockyards to battlefields, Smell Detectives shows us why stench mattered. Chemists, reformers, mothers, cartoonists, politicians, physicians, generals, bureaucrats, and industrialists struggled to trace and abate stink to keep Americans healthy. With grace and verve, Kiechle explains their reasoning and their legacy."—Conevery Bolton Valencius, Boston College

"Smell Detectives draws insights from the rapidly developing literature in sensory history and applies them to the nineteenth-century urban environment. The results are illuminating and extend the field of environmental history in new and fascinating directions."—Michael Rawson, author of Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston