Anyone who loves history has probably wondered what the world must have smelled like in the past – especially in the cities. How did people tolerate the stink?

But smells can help us to understand a lot about our history, as Birgit Näther, a historian based at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute at Freie Universität Berlin, explains. “Smells have always been an important way for people to tell whether the air quality was good or bad. And if it was bad, they naturally tried to make it better,” she says. Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume opened readers’ eyes – and noses – to the aroma of the past, but although Näther enjoyed the book, she notes that many fictional accounts have little to do with reality.

Air Pollution – An Issue Even in the Middle Ages

“Smelling the Metropolis: Emission, Infection, and Olfactory Monitoring in London,” Näther’s current research project, investigates what people really thought about the air and its effect on health between 1650 and 1850. With her project, Näther hopes to reveal the connections between the social and urban history of London – often referred to even today as “The Smoke” – and medical and environmental research in the Early Modern period.

She is particularly interested in the olfactory aspects of history because of a certain paradox she has come across in her research. “Scientists in the eighteenth century had generally come to believe that our sense of smell is ‘too subjective’ to merit serious attention. But it was precisely at this time that people also began to pay more attention to smells in everyday life. People began to look for ways to deodorize their surroundings. Smells that had formerly been acceptable were now suddenly felt to be embarrassing. What changed? After all, it’s not as if people didn’t have noses before.”

The research project is still in its early stages, and Näther has not yet been able to visit many archives due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the historian has already identified one possible reason for the apparent contradiction. “Even in the later medieval period, people were already talking about problems with the air quality. But of course, the population continued to grow. Cities were growing at an incredibly fast rate, with people packed into tiny spaces, and at some point, the problems just exploded.”

The Air Held Hidden Dangers

But London in particular was also affected by one problem other cities didn’t have. “London was unique in that it began to burn sea coal very early on, when most places were still using wood. And this coal was used in every kind of industry, for example, in bakeries,” Näther explains. Along with smoke pollution, London’s air was also affected by emissions from cattle markets and slaughterhouses, cesspits, and general refuse – emissions that were thought to be infectious.

Part of Birgit Näther’s work involves analyzing complaints and legal documents related to air pollution. This archive not only demonstrates the scale of the problem, it also gives an indication of why Londoners found the air so frightening: “People believed that their bodies as well as their property could be physically damaged by smoky air.” Before the discovery of bacteria in the nineteenth century, many believed that the air itself caused disease.

The air was thought to hold hidden dangers, emanations known as “miasmas.” Anything could give off a miasma: living creatures, dead flesh, even the Earth itself. People believed that miasmas could be absorbed not only through the lungs but also through the skin. If the air was so polluted that it “turned bad,” it meant that the threat was more or less inescapable.

The Plague of 1665 – London’s Worst Epidemic

In London, epidemics regularly ravaged the city, and it was believed that diseases such as the plague or cholera were directly linked to air quality. People took measures to try to protect themselves.

The worst epidemic was in 1665, when a terrible outbreak devastated the city. “In 2019, I held a seminar about this event,” Birgit Näther tells us. “When I told my students that Londoners were so afraid of infection that they washed their correspondence, they laughed. But just a few months later in 2020, the WHO had to tell us that the virus couldn't be transmitted via mail as people were so worried about letters coming from China.”

Näther continues, “It’s striking to see how historical events are now catching up with the present.” We may now find it easier to understand why people back then took certain precautions, even though they lacked our knowledge of how illnesses are transmitted.

The historian explains that people in the past spent a lot of time observing their environment. “People didn’t go to areas where they knew there had been a plague outbreak. They wouldn’t even use hired wagons that were known to frequent those places, and they avoided narrow streets where the air could stagnate.” However, some health measures were very much of their time, such as attempts to purify “bad air” with fragrances or smoke. “In Northern Europe, we don’t tend to find ‘plague masks’ filled with herbs as in Italy, for example, but people did like to carry pomanders containing sweet-scented compounds or spices.”

Lightning Does Strike Twice: First the Plague, Then the Fire

London had two terrible years in 1665 and 1666. After the plague, the city was nearly burned to the ground in the Great Fire of the following year. “When the time came to rebuild, people were very concerned about air quality. The new streets were built on a broader scale to make sure the air could circulate properly,” says Näther. She explains that the city authorities took complaints about air quality seriously, employing “quartermasters” to check that cesspools were not emptied in the summer months and that bad-smelling trades, such as tanneries, were located in districts further from residential areas.

But the struggle for better air continued, partly because of London’s geography. The city lies in the Thames river basin, where the air close to the ground tends to be cooler than the air higher up. This temperature inversion means that air circulation is naturally slow. This is a typical cause of smog, a word created by combining “smoke” and “fog.” “Long before the word ‘smog’ existed, Londoners were struggling with its consequences,” says Birgit Näther. Even the most exclusive residential areas were not immune; Queen Elizabeth I herself took the time to complain about the smoky conditions at her castle in Whitehall.

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This text originally appeared in German on February 20, 2021, in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität.