Look behind the mask of the plague doctor

Pest doctors, or at least images of pest doctors, are getting a bit of a cultural moment again, about 300 years after the actual day. They have been a popular motif for stickers, pins, exotic faces, t-shirts, and even stuffed animals during the Covid-19 pandemic (your loyal contact is a collector on semi glossy). But what is the truth behind an image mask?

Not just any doctor

Plague doctors were government contractors. When the plague hit a European city, the local government hired a doctor specifically to treat patients with a plague. Some of these treaties are still in a number of historical archives across Europe today, mostly in places like France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, and explain the responsibilities the plague doctor, the limits of their use, and what the city would pay. them.

A pest doctor’s salary could range from a bunch of flowers per month to full space, table, and expenses – but it meant the doctor had to treat even the poorest patients, who would not have been paid alone, and could not refuse to enter your home or community with a plague. On the other hand, pest doctor contracts also prohibit pest doctors from treating people who did not already have the plague, and had to stay separate from the rest of the community when they were not deep with burns in victims of the plague. Both of these restrictions were to keep pest doctors from transmitting the disease to unprotected people.

When the plague hit a city, there may already be one or two doctors, usually running a private center in the city. These boys, however, were not pest doctors. For one thing, they run their own practices, instead of having a contract with the local government. And while they could treat plague patients if they wanted to, many would prefer to avoid the risk – for good reason. In 1348, when the plague first reached Italy, many communities found themselves without doctors, as they all died from the plague or ran away. Pest doctor contracts were an attempt to correct that problem.

Panicking, when medieval and Renaissance cities tried to hire doctors to do dangerous, tedious, stigmatized work that also placed severe restrictions on how they lived, doctors just didn’t fall over. on each other to compete for the job. Pest doctors were often newly trained doctors or surgeons who needed to gain experience and make names for themselves, or else they were doctors who had difficulty finding other work or continuing practice. Sometimes they weren’t even doctors at all, just people who were willing to walk into the quarantine field and do their best.

Here to help

Pest doctors look threatening and spoofing today, and they were even more horrible in the 1600s and 1700s, because when a pest doctor appeared in your neighborhood, it was a sign that things were about to get worse. . Of course, that was not the pest doctor’s fault.

In theory, plague doctors tried to reduce suffering and perhaps even save lives, but neither they nor their patients had bad intentions; the plague was almost deadly. The best thing a pest doctor could do was to drain blood and lymph from the swollen bubbles that gave the bubonic plague its name – but sometimes that only helped spread the disease. By the time the plague doctor appeared on your doorstep, you were already embarrassed, so a particularly helpful figure became a sign of death.

In practice, the most useful thing most pest doctors could do was to keep records of the number of diseases and deaths in their community. At times they would also be witnesses while their patients plotted a will. Once in a very good time while doing autopsies in an attempt to understand the disease that has affected Europe away and on for centuries.

Decorated for success

For the first few centuries of the bubonic plague revolution in Europe, 1348 to 1619, pest doctors did not have special clothing. Around 1619, however, a physician recommended a court to Louis XII of France (and later the most famous Louis XIV) called Charles de Lorme a suit for the protection of plague doctors from the patient’s illness. It was captured elsewhere on continental Europe (no known examples from the UK) and became the iconic clothing of Doctor Plague as we know it today.

For people who understand how bacteria and viruses spread, and who are used to seeing today ‘s healthcare workers in protective equipment such as surgical gowns and breathing masks, it’s clear. that the plague doctor’s clothing is a stroke of genes. A long leather gown covered the doctor from head to toe, and under the gown were steep leather legs, boots and gloves. The mask resembled a beak, supposed to be just 6 inches long, full of dried flowers, herbs with a strong scent, and sponges with camphor or grapes.

Pest doctors also carried a wooden cannon, which allowed them to examine, remove and guide patients without touching or even getting too close to it. Cans also make useful tools for pushing social distance, which was actually something medieval and people understood the Renaissance that could reduce the spread of the plague. The top of the dress was topped with a wide-brimmed leather hat, which was mostly an office badge in case the mask was somewhat fuzzy.

That looks like an early version of a breathing mask and a surgical gown, but Lorme devised the idea to protect not against germs, but against miasma – air with a foul smell believed to be up to the 1800s. , as a source of disease. In fact, the pest doctor’s clothing may have protected the wearer against droplets from cough, from pneumonic plague, or splattered blood and lymph in the case of bubonic plague. More importantly, however, the wax leather was probably protected against fleas, which emerged as the true carriers of the plague.