ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the Greek and Arabic-language theories of the sense of smell that influenced the development of scholastic olfactory theory. The most influential Greek authors were Aristotle and Galen. However, medieval scholars first received their theories through Arabic medicine, only learning the Greeks’ original works later. The Arabic-language authors who are cited most often in European discussions of olfaction are Isaac Israeli, Avicenna, Averroes, Haly Abbas, and Constantine the African. These authors were primarily medical authorities, and their main intellectual loyalty regarding olfaction lay with the physician Galen rather than the philosopher Aristotle. However, many of these writers, especially Avicenna, fused aspects of Aristotelian thought with Galenic medicine to form a Galenic-Arabic theory of the sense of smell. It is this Galenic-Arabic theory that became the starting point for medieval European smell theory. The key elements of both Greek and Arabic smell theories are the designation of the sense organ of smelling (either the nose or the front of the brain, which Arabic sources named the “olfactory breasts”), the nature of odor (what odor physically is), the types of odors, and the effects of odors on the body.
