Does Sickness Smell?
However, a sensitive sense of smell may still give physicians a unique advantage. Some diseases have a particular scent. You may have even detected the scent of a sinus infection on the breath of a loved one. Researchers have described several scents related to diseases,8 including the smell of baked bread on someone with typhoid fever, boiled cabbage in someone unable to metabolize methionine, and the scent of a butcher's shop on someone who suffers from yellow fever.
