Smell and sweetness as characteristic life · Lexicon

From the book

Nine Books on the Nature of Things

Attributed to Paracelsus · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordOdor is smell, with adjectives specifying whether it is pleasing or foul.
In the workThe dung passage defines the unusual undosa through human and animal excrement and calls their strong fetid odour their life.
In this editionNote 53 records armoniacarum as the printed form in Book V, apparently for aromaticarum; the margin Aromata supports the translated sense.
A place to read“combustibilis maleolens pinguedo”

Meaning

Odor is smell, with adjectives specifying whether it is pleasing or foul. Dulcedo is sweetness. Book IV uses both as distinctive life-bearing qualities, but it does not make pleasantness the universal criterion of vitality. A foul smell can be the life of one material, a good smell the life of another. The separate verb dulcificare later names an operation and requires its own contextual account.

Use in the book

The dung passage defines the unusual undosa through human and animal excrement and calls their strong fetid odour their life. Loss of that odour makes them dead. The next paragraph applies the same structure to aromatic things such as musk, ambergris and civet: their pleasing smell is their life, and without it they are dead and useless. These adjacent examples deliberately show opposite sensory values fulfilling the same explanatory role.

Sulphur supplies a further distinction. Its foul-smelling combustible fatness marks its living condition, but Book V values a preparation from which that quality has been removed. Conversely, spirit of salt preserves flesh and blood from stench and putrefaction. It would therefore be inaccurate to say either that stench always signifies life or that it always signifies death. Its meaning depends on which material and which process are being discussed.

Sweet substances likewise live through a tinging subtle sweetness. The list includes sugar, honey, manna and cassia fistula. Removal of sweetness makes them insipid and powerless; Book V describes their mortification through operations involving corrosives. In the Mercury passage “sweet” has a more specifically operational setting: acridity is said to be removed, and a preparation is compared with sugar or honey. That claim belongs to historical practice and must never be treated as an invitation to taste or ingest it. The shared vocabulary should make readers attentive to context, not encourage the collapse of culinary sweetness and dangerous preparations.

Places to read

Book 4 · Life · Passage 5Latin“combustibilis maleolens pinguedo” Foul smell is a positive characteristic of living sulphur in this catalogue.
Book 4 · Life · Passage 10Latin“gravis & foetens odor” Fetid smell is life in the dung example.
Book 4 · Life · Passage 11Latin“odor ipse gratus” Pleasing smell is life in the aromatic example.
Book 4 · Life · Passage 12Latin“res mortuae & fatuae” Loss of sweetness makes these substances dead and insipid.
Book 4 · Life · Passage 16Latin“a foetore & putredine conservat” Flesh and blood instead depend on a principle preserving them from foulness and decay.
Book 5 · Death · Passage 27Latin“ablatio boni odoris” Aromatic mortification removes good odour.
Book 5 · Death · Passage 28Latin“cum corrosivis” Sweet substances are mortified through operations involving corrosives.

Translation in this edition

Note 53 records armoniacarum as the printed form in Book V, apparently for aromaticarum; the margin Aromata supports the translated sense. “Insipid” renders fatuae locally and does not mean intellectual foolishness. The undosa reading is retained and explained by its own hoc est (note 34).