I’m curious about something and I hope it isn’t too strange to ask. I don’t mean the smell of a cadaver during dissection, but rather when surgeons operate on a living patient. Does the human body have a noticeable smell on the inside—like from tissues, blood, or organs—that medical professionals become aware of during surgery? Or is it mostly odorless unless something unusual (like infection) is present?
I’ve worked with farm animals before, and I’ve noticed that pigs, chickens, and sheep each have their own unique internal smell.
Does a person’s diet or lifestyle affect whether that smell is stronger or unpleasant?
I hope this is not against rule 8.
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I’m no expert but I’d imagine it probably depends where you are in the body. The intestines probably don’t smell wonderful. But I’ve never considered how the inside my skull might smell, for example. What does a brain smell like? Well shit, now I want to know too.
Just take a shit and you will know. At least this is my guess
Our insides smell gut-wrenching. Which makes total sense from an evolutionary point of view: when we smell „inside-body“, something is horribly wrong.
Anything to do with the digestive tract smells terrible. If i remember right, brains dont smell good either. And when cauterization is being done it apparently smells good. Just like regular cooking meat
Aside from hospital smelling like pharmacy, only the surgeons or someone who did the transplant know the answer.
Depends what you mean by inside. Inside the dermis, fat, muscle, and fascia mostly smells kinda like blood unless there’s an infection somewhere. Different organs smell differently when cut into. If you’re not a vegetarian, think about the smell of cooked liver (or any offal) vs cooked chicken thigh. Same difference raw
I always wonder if i smell when i need to release the taco bell. As I know how it smells when I do and I dont know how I kept that smell inside…
Same as any animal.
I’m from a village where people used to kill pigs cows and chicken by themselves. As kids we liked to check it out when they doing it. Organs don’t actually have any smell unless it’s broken. Meat does have mild smell but it’s the same as the meat products in the market
Doctors probably wouldn’t be able to give a great explanation seeing as there’s a bunch of chemical smells in the way from the disinfectant and everything else going on
Med student here. The inside of the body itself doesn’t really have any smell (unless there is some sort of gangrene going on). What you mostly notice in surgery is the burnt smell from cautery (used to stop bleeding). That said, during an endoscopy, we once had a big fart escape, and the whole room was hit with a truly awful stench.
Many factors to take into account.
I am a funeral director / embalmer and we deal with various types of embalmings.
During an autopsy there is an overwhelming smell of “copper”. Most cancer patients tend to have more of a fruity, sweet smell due to the ports and the presence of medication.
We obviously have the occasional decomp which smells, well, terrible…
But as far as the “inside” of a body, the viscera (heart, lungs, intestines) has many factors, but overall the smell reminds me of a large jar of pennys or spare change. Haha
Not pleasant. I will tell you that.
I have been to a lot of autopsies. Every one of them smell horrible. The individuals with cancer are even worse.
This question starts the psychopath killer quest IRL, what a weird thing to ask lmao
Same as outside. With their nose
Like pork. Or, how a pig would smell inside.
Does flesch/meat smell? Faintly but Yes. So do we.
is this r/cannibal?
It’s not a human but in school we dissected parts of a sheep and it almost all stank like well.. death lol.
Like roses and strawberries.
Surgeons and operating room staff do sometimes notice smells during surgery, but in healthy living humans, it’s usually very faint. Blood can have a slight metallic scent, and tissues or organs may have a subtle organic odor, but it’s nothing like the strong internal smells of farm animals. Diet and lifestyle can have minor effects—foods like garlic or asparagus, smoking, or alcohol might slightly influence bodily fluids—but these scents are rarely noticeable during surgery. Stronger or unpleasant odors usually only appear with infections, necrotic tissue, or certain metabolic conditions. Overall, the inside of a healthy human body is mostly odorless to the surgical team.
Doctor here. Not very pleasant.
Yes, I’ve had to help clean up a few mass casualty events, and there’s a distinct smell. Idk what it is, I assume the blood or guts, but it smelled the same every time, but each one involved explosives, so that definitely added to the odor. Even the body bags/trash bags have an odor afterwards, in my opinion. I’d assume a dr or surgeon would have more input though.
Yeah OPs totally not a psychopath….
Idk but for me, smell of blood is almost the same to smell of iron
I dunno, but whatever my body made when I had a baby smelled so freaking good. Vernix is what baby powder desparately tries (and fails) to mimic. I hate the smell of baby powder… but that stuff smelled incredible.
I’ve watched a lot of surgeries, but didn’t smell much until they started burning stuff.
If its like in pigs then yes. It has this meaty blood and slime sweet scent? Dont know how to describe it. Intestines smell little bit differently meaty+ little bit of poop (but it smells different then when you freshly poop)
Like iron. A metallic smell is my guess
I worked in Corrections for 7 years. First shift was a crime scene escort for a cleaner. Door opened in the cell of someone who would self harm quite extremely. There were bits of meat and blood. Smelt just like minced beef. Everytime I smell mince I am reminded of that scene.
Pathologist here (one with a strong sense of smell, at least I like to think so). Considering only individuals that were mostly healthy until the very last moments (accidents, murder victims, ruptured aneurysms etc) and those that were autopsied before autolytic processes set in, the body does have a distinct smell on the inside (without opening any organs). I’d say it smells somewhat like fresh, uncooked cow meat, a little less intense maybe.