The senses of cholera: transformations of gustation and olfaction in 19th-century Iran

Abstract

In this article, I examine how Greco-Islamic and clinical medicine competed in the context of cholera epidemics in 19th-century Iran. By close-reading medical texts in this period, I sketch out this competition by focusing on how ideas about cholera prevention and treatment centered on certain understandings of the sense of smell and taste. The main argument is that while in Greco-Islamic medicine, the gustatory and olfactory experiences involving cholera and its treatment received substantial attention, in the clinical approach these experiences were methodically avoided and contained.