You're So Smelly! Where did your awesomely scented perfume come from?

Perfumes were used in Egypt since its ancient days. They are a combination of fragrant essences obtained from plants and other odorous substances. Avicenna, an Arab physician, is known to have discovered the process of distillation which made the process of making essential oils less expensive.

In 1370, the first modern perfume, a combination of scented oils and alcohol solution, was made. It was made under the order of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary. That perfume was later called Hungary Water. In the 16th century, refinements in the process were made by Catherine de Medici's personal perfumer. Then France became the European center of perfume.

What's really in your perfume? Let me tell you the stinky truth. Well, all perfumes use fixatives. Fixatives are used to bind all the fragrances. Where do those fixatives come from? They come from really smelly animals. It can be from their sex organs or from their urine. Examples of which are written below. Just imagine how much stink you spray on your body each time you use a perfume.

The musk deer is a small, usually solitary deer commonly found in forests at high altitudes in central and northeastern Asia. Only adult males have special musk glands. This can be found in the skin of their abdomen. It secretes a waxlike, musky substance during the rutting season. This musk is for attracting females.

The musk-ox can be found in Canada, Greenland, and Alaska, on open tundras to well-vegetated terrains. It has a broad, down-curving horns on its large head. To protect themselves from the cold weather, they have long dark brown outer covering and soft, dense undercoat. It has a musky odor, that's why it is named as musk-ox. Its urine is used as fixatives to perfumes.