If you were to travel back in time to British Colonial America, I suspect that it wouldn't be the smell of dung in the streets that would be most repulsive to your modern nose, but the scent of the people.

[...] White people of the time rarely bathed in the modern sense. The removal of all clothes prior to treatments, exfoliation, massage, and submersion in water for the sake of getting clean were exceptional to Colonial Americans to the point that when they are noted in diaries and records from the time, they're discussed as a novelty, usually done by the rich and eccentric. Within my pristine bath egg, I enjoyed the sort of full-body, steamy soak Queen Elizabeth I only took once per month.

— Tracy Robey visits the Spa of Colonial Williamsburg. Read more at Colonial Williamsburg Has a Luxury Historical Spa at Racked.