SMELLS IN HISTORY · IN SOURCES PUBLISHED 1782
1782
SmellBook holds 1 checked passage from a source published in 1782. The passage states no time of its own, so 1782 is only the latest time it can describe; it may describe an earlier time. The passage records what one source wrote, not what everything smelled like.
SmellBook records: In the first volume of his Tableau de Paris (1782), Louis-Sébastien Mercier writes that a cadaverous odour could be smelled in almost all the churches of Paris, blaming the dead buried there, and adds that some held it to be the mouldy, cellar-like smell of the great stone buildings mistaken for the odour of death.
Claim: The smell of Paris churches in 1782 · Tableau de Paris, tome I (book), p. 128. The passage states no time; the source's publication date is used as the latest possible time it describes.
About this time
A period is the time a checked historical passage describes, kept at the precision the evidence gives: a century (only when the passage states one), a year, a month or a day; when a passage states no time, its publication date is used as the latest time it can describe. A smell is linked to it only through a VERIFIED claim on a historical source. Each link records what one source wrote, which may be later than the time it describes; it does not describe a whole city or era, it says nothing about the smell today, and it is not evidence that a smell has changed or disappeared. Decades and centuries only group these records for browsing.
For researchers and developers
Graph record
This period and its links, each with where it comes from, as data.
Permanent identifier smellbook:period:1782 · Graph record (JSON)
Cite as SmellBook. (2026). 1782 (period). SmellBook knowledge graph, dataset release of 2026-10-25. smellbook:period:1782. https://smellbook.com/periods/1782
Dataset history In the SmellBook dataset since the dataset release of 2026-10-19.