A condition where a person perceives foul or offensive smells that aren't actually present, similar to phantosmia.
From Greek 'kakos' (bad) + 'osmē' (smell). The prefix 'caco-' meaning bad or evil was combined with the smell-related root in the 19th century to describe olfactory hallucinations.
This condition reveals how our brains can trick our senses—some people with cacosmia report smelling things like burning rubber or rotting flesh when nothing is there, and it can actually be linked to temporal lobe epilepsy or brain injuries, showing how fragile our perception really is.
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