During the early modern period up until the late 18th century, smells were thought of as volatile corpuscles or salts carried to our noses through the air. Smells were truly made of matter, either specific and ontologically different from its source-object (aroma theory), or infinitesimal emanations from the odorous bodies themselves (atomic model). This understanding of odours led to the emergence of the molecular theory of olfaction from the 1820s onward. At the beginning of the 19th century however, despite all the evidence in favour of the corpuscular/chemical paradigm, the consideration of olfaction as a vibratory sense, much like sight and sound, became more popular among scientists and artists, as it allowed to think of smells in the same way as light, colour, sound, and especially music, but also other physical phenomena, such as heat or electricity. This presentation briefly describes and explains how the vibratory theory of olfaction (its influences, beliefs, ideologies, etc.) came to be during the 19th century to show how the scientific study of olfaction is influenced by cultural productions, such as the arts, popular culture, philosophy, and especially religion. Historically, the scientific understanding of olfaction is rooted in complex ideological debates between different scientific fields of knowledge.