The average foot contains 600 sweat glands per square centimetre – hundreds more than the armpits. No matter how clean you are, a slight odour is almost inevitable, given the anatomy of our feet. For this reason, Smallegange has been trying to find the unique recipe that gives our feet their odour, in a quest to help stem the spread of that deadly disease. While a strong stench may cause Smallegange to politely hold her nose, however, it happens to be a real turn-on for the other objects of her study: malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Not everyone finds the stink so discomforting. “Of course some people do smell nicer than others – from my personal point of view.” Of all the jobs in the world, it’s certainly not the most pleasant, but Smallegange is mostly unperturbed by the occasional whiff of cheese. When she’s being really picky, she’ll trap the feet in a plastic bag, allowing her to draw up the aroma in gusts of air. If that’s not good enough, she asks people to rub their feet on glass beads and wipe their sweaty skin on the surface. Sometimes she’ll collect worn nylon socks that have become imbued with the fragrance. Renate Smallegange is something of a connoisseur of smelly feet – and she goes to surprising lengths to study their odours.
