Smells and Bells

How would you feel if someone told you they'd touched the hand of a saint? Source: bristolnews.blogspot.com That's a question you might have been able to answer if you lived in medieval Europe. Medieval history has always fascinated me, and religion was obviously a huge component of the medieval lifestyle--particularly, of course, in terms of the rise of Christianity. In those days, the foundations of that religion were just beginning to come together, and thus, it would have been easy enough to preserve the finger bone of a deceased martyr or saint--for these martyrs and saints lived and died during the time period. Relics in Christianity are essentially a representation, a remaining figment, of a holy person's body that illustrates how the body is irrevocably connected to the soul in the Christian faith. If a holy person died, preserving their body was extremely important because they would need it when Judgment Day occurred and souls were reunited with their bodi...

While reading Diane Ackerman's Natural History of the Senses, I was stormed up inside my boyfriend's apartment. It was a snow day after all, so I decided that I had to make a cup of hot chocolate the "old fashioned" way: by heating up milk on the stove and pouring it over a mix of 100% pure cocoa powder, sugar, and a touch of vanilla extract. While adding my ingredients together my boyfriend's roommate said from another room "that smells like the real stuff".  Pre Ackerman I probably wouldn't have payed much attention to the comment, however reading about "the mute sense" has made me much more in tune with it. I was suddenly amazed by our abilities to smell and was puzzled by why we all (myself included) take this sense for granted. If you were to ask me three days ago if I thought that people could use smell alone to tell the difference between different types of cocoa mix (Swiss Miss, Hersey's, Nestle, or packet vs. hom...