The Joy Of Sweat

Sarah Everts W.W. Norton £19.99

It is the ultimate temperaturecontrol system, essential to our survival as a species but little understood. We can each release up to ten litres of the stuff every day. It can be a source of shame, embarrassment and discomfort, and in order to combat it we spend tens of billions every year on antiperspirants and deodorants. Welcome to the world of sweat.

The top note found in armpit aroma, apparently, is either a marriage between ripe tropical fruit and onion or a rancid, goat-like stench with a hint of stinky cheese. There is even such a thing as the smell of fear. The first trademarked deodorant – Mum – launched in 1888. There are three million saunas in

Finland for a population of five million. Who knew?

Sarah Everts, a science journalist, takes us on a global tour of the sweat industry: from a smell dating event in Moscow’s Gorky Park to ‘sauna theatre’ in Amsterdam, and Berlin, where she meets an odour artist who can recreate historical smells – First World War trenches anyone? At Sheffield University she discovers the developing world of forensic sweat fingerprinting and, at the London Museum, the fashion curator enlightens her about the problems of historical sweat stains.

Everts has charm and enthusiasm, writes breezily and, along the way, effectively debunks a number of enduring myths: women do not ‘merely glow’; ‘sweating like a pig’ is a complete misnomer; saunas do not detox (they are good for your heart); the sports-drink industry is, unsurprisingly, largely a triumph of marketing over substance.

What it all adds up to, I’m not entirely sure, but this journey through one of the more arcane areas of human biology is fun, entertaining and full of interesting facts, whatever your levels of hidrosis.