The Anosmic Perfumist and the Near-Sighted Amazonian
Two pieces of sensory trivia that we would like to know more about:
1) Legendary French perfumist Jean Carles lost his sense of smell but went on — like Beethoven after his deafness — to create the classic Ma Griffe perfume. Chandler Burr quotes Luca Turin in his terrific book The Emperor of Scent:
Carles’s condition was known only to him and his son. When a client came in, he’d go through the motions, make a big show of smelling various ingredients and, finally, the perfume he had created, which he would present with great gravity to the client, smelling it and waving its odor around the room. And he couldn’t smell anything!
Do any of our readers know any other sources on Jean Carles’s incredible story?
2) We recall reading in two different places (one of which may have been Oliver Sacks’s recent essay on stereoscopic vision in the New Yorker) about a tribe of Amazonian indians with no sense of long-distance visual perspective. Living entirely in the confines of the rainforest, where long sightlines are a rarity, they fail to develop the ability to estimate long distances. According to one story we remember reading, an individual from this tribe reached out and tried to touch a mountain the first time he was brought into a clearing. This story sounds acrophyal. Are any of our readers able to confirm or disconfirm it?
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