My wife and her mother claim they can smell when children have a fever. It’s usually when I’ve noticed my daughters behavior changing; it could be they’re cranky, or tired, etc. Then my mother-in-law would hold my daughter close to her face and inhale and say something like, “Oh, she’s getting a fever,” or “It smells like she’s getting sick.”
Has anyone else heard of this? If it’s a true skill, apparently it’s one I lack.
I can smell when one of my children is getting sick, but I don’t think I’m smelling the fever necessarily. My explanation (the one I tell myself anyway) is that I’m probably smelling something like increased mucous production or something along those lines without realizing it. So, yeah, I’d buy that they can tell that a kid is getting sick by scent, but I’m not sure it’s a fever they’re smelling per se.
My husband once said of my son “oh he has that smell of sickness about him” and suggested we stay home from a family function. I’d never heard of such a thing, and still don’t understand it. Sure enough within about half an hour the kid was laid out flat with the blahs.
My husband is a heavy smoker and doesn’t seem to smell much of anything. I never did identify the smell that he assured me was very distinct.
I don’t know if it means anything in this discussion but my husband is not my son’s biological father so I can’t claim that there’s any primeval genetic instinctual connection.
My wife has tried to explain the smell to me, but about the only way she’s been able to tell me is, “they just smell sick.”
I can definitely smell a difference when my daughter’s feverish or when she’s ill with a similar complaint but not feverish (i.e. cold with or without fever). When I have a fever myself I can also smell a difference. My daughter gets a lot of very high fevers and always has, so maybe I’ve become attuned to it.
Heat changes the smell of things when they’re cooking, so I guess it makes sense that an increase in heat in the human body could make a difference in the smell too - though obviously we don’t get quite as hot as a broiling steak. 
The human fever smell doesn’t smell like cooking, though - it just, to me, smells like fever. Not a bad smell, kinda bittersweet.
My SO just went through a bout of bad illness, and his fever definitely changed his natural smell (what? everybody has a natural smell). But, I wonder if what it was that people smell is the smell itself, or a combination of a possible change in smell and the fact that they are holding their nose to a higher-temperature body.
The OP said his/her mother-in-law holds the child close to her face. Well, she’d be able to sense a temperature change as well as a smell change, wouldn’t she?
I can smell when my kids are sick (particularly when they were very young) as well as when my husband or I am getting sick. I assume I could probably smell it on anyone that I am familiar with. It is only infections/fevers though, I can’t smell out cancer or anything like that.
It makes sense if you think about it though. Bacteria etc. often have distinct odors by which they can sometimes be identified (Pseudomonas in particular has a very distinct, almost sweet smell) so even more mundane bacteria and illness smells like something that is different than normal.
For those who don’t recognize it, the smell of illness/fever is not really unpleasant or stinky, just “not right”. Like “little kid smell” only slightly sour and “hot” if that makes sense. (Please don’t ask me how something can smell hot, it just does. ;))
That’s exactly how I’d describe it too - I said bittersweet; I’m thinking of something like bitter almonds. The bacteria thing makes sense.
It’s definitely not the look of the person either, but the smell. With my daughter I can smell it as soon as I open the bedroom door. But then she gets so damn hot that you can practically feel it from there too.
Wife wife always says that when her kids were ill, they would smell “sort of musty”.
I understand the logic behind this, but is the human nose really sensitive enough to pick up on these subtle changes? I guess from the posts so far, the answer is yes.
I can’t smell sickness in others, but I can taste it in myself. When I’m coming down with something, I get a sort of subtle sourness in my mouth.
I once told that to my doctor. He said that that was impossible, that there is no medical basis for such a thing.
But it’s about 90% accurate for me.
Can’t say I’ve ever smelled a fever, but I’ve never really tried to. I’m going to start sniffing sick people. For science.
Then again, maybe that’s something that’s enhanced with Mommyhood - I’ll get back to you in a couple of years.
I can tell when I have a fever, because my eyes ache. I get this dull ache behind my eyeballs and it’s always a warning sign that I’ve got a fever starting and I’ll be feeling like crap for a couple of days.
I can smell it when my kids are sick, particularly when they were younger, but that could be because I’d get a lot closer to them then. I’ve always thought it was a “mediciney” smell, but not related to the use of medicine because they would smell like that without even taking any.
I just told my husband this morning that our son smelled sick and he looked at me like I was nuts. All three of my kids smell different when they are sick. I kind of assumed it was a change in the smell of his breath from excessive amounts of mucus. I am so happy to see I am not alone in smelling sickness!
I couldn’t tell when they were about to get sick, but when my kids ran a high fever, they always smelled sort of sour (and this was even if they hadn’t been throwing up).
Ewwww…I hate the taste of getting sick. I can taste it too, and that is exactly how I can tell if I have strep throat (which I used to get frequently) or just a “flu”. Strep tastes just awful, but flu-like illnesses just taste sour (or sometimes metallic) and no amount of mouth rinsing or tooth brushing can get rid of it.
I can definitely smell respiratory sickness on someone’s breath. It’s hard to describe- sort of metallic, sort of sweet, unpleasant. I assume it’s the virus or bacteria in the person’s mucus that’s causing the smell.
I can smell when Celtling is coming down with somehting - up to a day before she shows symptoms. It a change in the sweat, I think, and I’ve always assumed it had to do with by-products of the immune response being excreted.
Her normal smell is almost like cotton candy, but her sick smell is more like sour cream, with maybe an smidge of acrid or alkaline chemical-ness in it.
When I’m sick I practically sweat vinegar, it’s that obvious; but I never notice it in advance liek I do with Celtling.