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+--- Thread: Elixir: A Story of Perfume, Science and the Search for the Secret of Life (/showthread.php?tid=343)
Elixir: A Story of Perfume, Science and the Search for the Secret of Life - Paul Ferguson - 08-09-2023
By Theresa Levitt.
"In 1770 a new perfume shop opened in the centre of Paris on the rue du Bourg-l’Abbé, a fragrant oasis adjoining a district that was, according to one contemporary, ‘by far the worst-smelling place in the world’. This stretch of the Right Bank was home to an abattoir, a fish market, a butcher, an overcrowded prison and a mortuary, whose combined effluvia flowed through open sewers directly into the Seine. Blaise Laugier’s new store in a side street off the open market of Les Halles, sandwiched between a florist and a seller of scented fans, took its place among a cluster of fashionable boutiques catering to an expanding metropolitan class for whom perfume had become an essential part of daily life."
Reviewed here:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n15/mike-jay/in-the-alchemist-s-den