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History of Perfume
Whale gut on your neck. Poison in your gloves.
Plague doctors in beaked masks. Perfume was never about smelling nice — it was about gods, disease, status, and survival.
I'm Aiden Thomas of Hidden History. And this is the hidden history of perfume — from per fumum, through Tapputi's 4,000-year-old recipes in Mesopotamia and the Pyrgos factory in Cyprus, to Egyptian kyphi and Roman unguents, to al-Kindi and Avicenna perfecting distillation in the Islamic Golden Age.
We follow ambergris from whale to luxury, scented leather from Grasse, Catherine de' Medici and la cour parfumée under Louis XIV…
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