This sounds exactly like the description of the plague doctor’s attire from the Assassin’s Creed Wiki (and numerous other websites). Their face is wrapped up in front of their eyes they have large crystal glasses over their nose they have a long beak filled with good-smelling spices in their hands, which are protected by gloves, they carry a long rod and with this they indicate what people should do and what they should use. And they wear, to protect themselves from poison, a long robe made of waxed cloth. The doctors of medicine in Rome go about thus, when they visit people sick with the plague in order to take care of them. Also gehen die Doctores Medici daher zu Rom, wann sie die an der Pest erkranckte personen besuchen, sie zu curiren und tragen, sich widerm Gifft zu sichern, ein langes kleid von gewäxtem Tüch ihr Angesicht ist verlarvt, für den Augen haben sie grosse Crÿstalline Brillen, wider Nasen einen langen Schnabel mit wolriechender Specereÿ, in der Hände, welche mit Handschüher wol versehen ist, eine lange Rüthe und darmit deüten sie, was man thun, und gebraüchen sol.Ĭlothing to ward off death in Rome, 1656. (Corrections and suggestions are more than welcome!) I’ll give the original (for those who can read German but not the old-fashioned Gothic lettering) and my translation. The title is “Der Doctor Schnabel von Rom” (Dr. As this seems to be the main primary source for what plague doctors wore and what they did, I’d like to look at it in detail. The second thing is that this is a SATIRE. The very last plague epidemics in Europe were in the early eighteenth century. The first thing I would note is that this is VERY late in the history of the plague. This entire book is available on-line here. The reproduction that appears all over the internet (generally without attribution) is from Eugen Holländer’s Die Karikatur und Satire in der Medizin, 2nd ed. This image was originally a single-sheet broadside, produced by the German engraver Paul Fürst of Nuremberg. My problem with these representations is that the only even remotely contemporary image I can find of a plague doctor in such a get up is this one, from 1656: Paul Fürst, “Der Doctor Schnabel von Rom.” Reproduced from Eugen Holländer, Die Karikatur und Satire in der Medizin, 2nd ed. In anger, he slashes the doctor’s protective glove, thus infecting him with the deadly plague. Set in 17th-century London, a sick gravedigger visits a plague doctor, only to be told he is dying and that the doctor will not treat him. My other favorite was this fantastically creepy video on YouTube: The Plague Doctor. Within this Medico Della Peste mask, there were usually flower petals, burning incense or aromatic herbs to rid of bad smells, since it was believed that disease was transmitted through “bad air.” The eyes of the mask were also made out of glass, as it was believed that sicknesses could be caught through face-to-face contact with patients, or by touching infected objects.” “To protect themselves from this pandemic, doctors dressed in a long black cloak covered with a coating of wax, along with a very primitive beak-shaped plague mask, although not all doctors chose to wear it. I pulled this picture from the Assassin’s Creed Wiki, which explains that, There is a doctor character in the enormously popular video game Assassin’s Creed who wears a plague mask. Let me give you a couple of my favorite examples: If it was so common, why didn’t I ever run across mentions of this costume in historical sources or in histories of the plague written by academic historians? A Google search on “plague doctor” turns up an enormous number of images of men in beaked masks and black cloaks, and numerous sites that assert as historical fact that this is what doctors wore during plague epidemics. But doubts about the historical accuracy of the plague mask have nagged at me for a while. Indeed, the 12-year-old son of some friends of mine just dressed up as a plague doctor for Halloween in precisely this costume. Even more commonly, people tell me they “know” what plague doctors looked like: they had a mask with a long beak, goggles, gloves and a garment that covered them from chin to ankles. I get asked this question a lot when I teach courses in the history of medicine or the history of science.
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