JF Ptak Science Books Lucky Post 1313
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds, Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds--Wm Shakespeare
In the long history of indoor stink, few things have succeeded (prior say to the year 1800) in eliminating odor like a piece or two of Buffalo hide. Actually its a piece of metal tubing that probably gets top billing for stink-eliminator, but that's getting ahead of the story.
And the story is an easy one: people for thousands of years have been living indoors, and in climates where you need to keep warm in the winter, and to be able to see stuff in the dark, people have needed to burn things for their heat/light sources that basically emit rotten odors. This is a gross generalization*, but there have been many nomadic cultures whose housing consisted on things like tents and yurts, simple structures with people living inside and burning a fire with nowhere for the smoke to exist. Tens of millions of people--maybe hundreds of millions--have lived this way, in a small, contained space, living with their sooty smoky fire, and the rancid fat or whatever that was burning in their lamps, all of which was mixed with cooking and living smells, all heated up and kept in the small space. Like an oven of sorts. (Dante commented frequently on the smell of Hell in the Inferno, and it wasn't a pretty thing, what with the heat and the decay. I don't think he had much to say about the 'taste" of place, but definitely had other things to say about how they felt, and looked, and sounded. Probably people coul drelate quite closely to the smells portion.)
I'm not saying that this is a global assertion, but it certainly applied to a lot fo people. Some of this unpleasant odor was masked with perfume, but I would say that this was probably not terribly effective, especially when compared to the methods that were effective.
Many Indian tribes in the North American Plains had tepees that were vented, holes in the tepee skin that were covered with Buffalo hide (or some sort of leather) that would allow smoke to escape; also there would be lower vents to allow air to come in. Fires in enclosed spaces do consume oxygen, just like people, and so at some point the fire and the people would compete for O2.
Kivas in New Mexico also were vented , and many would also have an under-the-structure tunnel devised to allow air to come and feed the fire from underneath. Great, workable ideas that were healthy, not to mention very effective in combating stink.
Perfumes and scents, herbs and the like just didn't stand a chance against the overwhelming odors that were produced by internal fires and lamps, but it really wasn't until the invention of the proper (and lined) chimney that relief was found. Well, that and the Franklin Stove--it was Benjamin Franklin's idea to have an iron stove with a roaring fire, the smoke being captured in pipe above the heating element and vented immediately outdoors. That was really one of the earliest methods by which nominally-monied people could afford to heat their environment in a healthy way, removing smoke form the environment as well as other nasties that were the direct consequence of unvented and tight indoor living.("fish and visitors smell after three days")
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*really, this is a roomy approximation. Romans (with the hypocaust), Chinese, and Koreans, among others, used sophisticated systems in antiquity. This is just a general conversation.
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