I'm going to skip trying to remember all the technical details from the last time I sailed anything and just say that the head is at the head of the boat, but it has nothing to do with "blowing the smells away". Boats do not always sail the direction the wind is blowing. We'd have never got anywhere before marine engines if that were the case.
During the "Age of Sail" those were not common for oceangoing ships, which predominately used square rigged sails and would primarily or exclusively run downwind.
Square masts can sail upwind, it's not as effective but you can get 50 or 55° into the wind.
Sure, they “primarily run downwind”... the same way cars “primarily drive on asphalt.” It's not that they can't drive on gravel or brick or off-road, it's that during the Age of Sail the main priority was swift conveyance and obviously if that's your priority you try to get back on the highway as soon as you can.
(My English sailing terminology might be incorrect; I'm Dutch, and sailing terminology is the only area of language that I only know in Dutch.)
Maybe you missed the context: the comment responded to the claim that it's a "misconception" that "sails work by the wind blowing on them from behind."
Seafarers would not learn how to sail against the wind until the early Christian era. Still, they got somewhere even before that.
You're referring to the Lateen sail that appeared in the eastern Mediterranean as early as 100AD, but it was imported from possibly Egypt or the Persian Gulf, so its origin is older and elusive. But the spritsail can also sail upwind and is far older, only appearing in Greco-Roman navigation in the 2nd century BC.