I'm kind of glad I don't know any of this from first-hand experience

[xylohypha]

The Scientific American has a monthly column which treats readers to tidbits from issues published years ago. The selection they currently use is from issues from 50, 100, and 150 years ago. (I remember when it was 50, 75, and 100 years. Oh, how the world changes!) In the June 2016 issue, there was a small entry from an 1866 issue which

Comments

[lenine2]

Interesting, but disgusting. On the other hand, I don't know what a he-goat or a fresh-plucked goose smells like. Maybe they smell delightful.

[xylohypha]

I've seen lines like "smelled like a billy-goat" and it always seemed to mean very very stinky. But there are so many possible varieties of "very very stinky" that that doesn't help a great deal.

Fresh-plucked goose is a mystery to me, also.

[semyaza]

I'd be surprised if most people with typhus knew what a Cossack smelled like. :D The past was a smelly place which makes one wonder how anyone would notice an extra billy-goat.

I don't recall measles and scarlatina having a smell.

[xylohypha]

I don't recall measles having a smell, either, but I was pretty young at the time. Never had the opportunity (that I'm aware of) to know if scarlatina smelled or not.

I'm imagining a small village with an outbreak of typhus. A couple weeks later, the Cossacks come through town--for their annual pillaging--and everyone goes, "That's what that disease with the fever and the rash and the cough and all the body aches smelled like! I knew it was familiar!