ABSTRACT

The value of smell in assisting medical diagnosis is a staple of medical culture, and has attracted extensive critical commentary. The binary pairing of physician and patient is a foundational construct of medical culture, and is dependent upon the maintenance of an appropriate professional division. The ubiquity of smell-related objections in patient accounts of the culture of Mid Staffs suggests the continuity of a rival counter narrative to idealised conceptions of the doctor, patient and hospital as unconcerned with, and unaffected by, olfactory experience. The value of olfaction as an aid to assisting diagnosis remains intact in the modern era, despite innovations and improvements in hygiene, and their assumed consequent neutralising effect on bodily derived malodours. The cultural history of olfaction suggest that odour tests the politic limits of what can and cannot be represented in literary discourse.