Why plague doctors wore beaked masks
The year is 1656.
Your body is wracked
by violent chills.
Your head pounds,
your muscles are too weak to sit up,
and you feel like rancid, hard-boiled eggs
are squeezing out of your neck
and armpits.
In your feverish state, you see
a strange-looking man approach,
his face obscured by a beak-like mask,
his body covered from head to toe.
He examines you
and even without seeing his face,
you know the diagnosis:
you have the plague.
The plague stands out as one of the most
terrifying and destructive diseases
in human history.
It swept across large parts of Afro-
Eurasia in three separate pandemics
starting in the 6th, 14th,
and 19th centuries;
killed tens of millions of people,
and had— in the best of cases—
about a 40% survival rate.
The European plague doctor, with his
beaked mask and wizard-like robes,
is one of the images most popularly
associated with plague today.
He’s often found in books and films
about the 14th century pandemic
known as the Black Death.
The only problem is
that’s about as accurate as placing
a modern surgeon at the court
of Louis the 14th in Versailles.
The confusion is understandable though—
the Black Death had several aftershocks,
including a series of devastating
outbreaks in Western Europe
during the 17th century.
This is when the iconic plague doctor
actually emerged on the scene.
First described in the early 17th century,
the outfit consisted of a hood
with crystal eyepieces
and a beak filled with a pungent
combination of herbs and compounds.
This could include cinnamon, pepper,
turpentine,
roast copper, and powdered viper flesh.
This recipe was inspired by the famed
2nd century Greco-Roman physician Galen,
and was thought to ward off poisoned air
known as miasma.
People believed this bad air
spread plague after emanating from swamps
and sources of decay,
such as dead plants or animal carcasses.
In earlier centuries, doctors across
Europe carried metal pomanders
filled with similar mixtures,
and it’s possible that the beak evolved
as a hands-free alternative.
The rest of the costume, which included
an oiled leather robe, boots and gloves,
acted as kind of an early hazmat suit,
likely designed to block miasma
from entering through the skin’s pores.
While this shows some basic understanding
that plague
spread from one place to another,
these doctors couldn’t know that,
in most cases,
the true culprit was a tiny flea
transmitting the bacteria,
Yersinia pestis,
from one person or animal to another.
It’s possible that the plague doctor’s
outfit may have provided
some unintentional protection
from flea bites.
However, not enough information
survives to know whether
the costumed doctors fared any better than
their ordinarily robed counterparts.
It's no surprise that this bizarre getup
has captured popular imagination,
despite the fact that its use was limited
to a few places in Italy and France
during the 17th and early 18th centuries.
Even at the time, it was viewed
with macabre fascination
and occasionally used to mock
the ineffective and corrupt
practices of some physicians.
Until the 20th century, there was
no effective treatment for the plague,
but that didn’t stop doctors—
costumed or not— from trying.
They consulted the works of earlier
physicians for guidance,
did what they could to fend off miasma,
and prescribed a variety
of concoctions and antidotes.
They also relied on pre-modern
medical mainstays.
These could include bloodletting,
which involved draining (sometimes
concerningly large amounts of) blood
in an attempt to remove poison
or restore the body’s natural balance.
Or cupping, where the rim
of a heated glass
was placed over swollen lymph nodes
in hopes of making them burst sooner—
a sign, when it occurred naturally,
that a plague patient was on the mend.
Or— perhaps most painfully—
cautery,
which involved lancing the lymph nodes
with a red-hot poker
to release the blackened pus within.
A lot has changed since their times.
Modern medicine has given us the means
to quickly identify
bacterial as well as viral threats
and to effectively mobilize against them.
We also have access to technologies
like test kits,
masks to deter the spread
of respiratory viruses, and vaccines;
and we conduct robust trials to make
sure they’re safe and effective.
But some things don’t change:
we still depend on the courage
and compassion of medical professionals
who voluntarily risk their lives
against an invisible attacker to help
and comfort those who need it most.
