Diane Ackerman, a writer intoxicated with the senses, writes about the sensory experience of smell in the first chapter of A Natural History of the Senses. She engages the reader with an aromatic story consisting of the evolution, cultural obsession, and science of the “mute sense”, smell. From early on Ackerman asserts that smell is the most direct of all of our senses. To help support her point, she describes the mechanics on smell. She informs the readers about receptor cells containing cilia that absorb odor molecules, and the fatty, yellow olfactory region. After detection, this area interprets these odor molecules by signaling the cerebral cortex that relays impulses to the limbic system. This process engrains these smells into our
