The Significance of Smell in Health and Disease

“Smell is a startling superpower,” writes Brooke Jarvis, the author of today’s Sunday Read. “If you weren’t used to it, it would seem like witchcraft.”

For hundreds of years, smell has been disregarded. Most adults in a 2019 survey ranked it as the least important sense; and in a 2011 survey of young people, the majority said that their sense of smell was less valuable to them than their technological devices.

The coronavirus has precipitated a global reckoning with the sense. Smell, as many have found in the last year, is no big deal until it’s missing.

This story was written by Brooke Jarvis and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

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