Olfactor research, or the anthropology of smell, is an important field in the modern humanities, as evidenced by this book on the history of smell in Western Europe during the modern era. What bizarre, dangerous and smelly potions were used several centuries ago to enhance beauty? How did artists manage to convey fragrance and stench in painting? What immodest poems did poets devote to intimate parts of the body? How did sensual animal perfumes give way to plant perfumes and how did doctors try to defeat the plague with the help of strong aromas? The book by the leading French cultural historian R. Muschemble, author of the studies “Orgasm” and “Essays on the History of the Devil,” convincingly shows that the classification of odors largely depends on the cultural attitudes of different eras and olfactory perception is subject to the same transformation as aesthetic criteria in art .