Joseph Hippolyte Cloquet (1787–1840)—Physiology of smell: Portrait of a pioneer

While the physiology, histology and stem cell biology of smell are active fields of contemporary research, smell is probably the sense that physicians knew the least about prior to the 20th century. Joseph-Hippolyte Cloquet (1787–1840) was an anatomist who, in 1815, defended a singular doctoral thesis—On odours, the sense of olfaction and the olfactory organs—then went on to publish, in 1821, the first complete treatise on rhinology. In our biographical sketch, we focus on Cloquet’s significant contributions to olfactory anatomy and physiology. His realization that odours are chemical and molecular in nature led him to formulate an accurate functional theory of the olfactory mucosa. Following a historical introduction, we review contemporary literature on the anatomical–functional understanding of olfaction and propose a (possibly debatable) theory for the lexical deficits one encounters when trying to describe the sense of smell