Why did plague doctors wear bird masks3/19/2024 Others blamed miasma – inhaling ‘poisonous’ or ‘bad’ air from rotting food and waste that lined the streets. Some saw it as God’s punishment on a sinful population and thought the best way to fight the disease was through prayer. In the 1600s, understanding of what caused and spread the plague was limited. The outbreak in 1645 proved the most devastating, leading to the demise of over half of the town’s population. The port of Leith was particularly vulnerable, as ships from plague infected areas overseas harboured rats that infected Leith’s unfortunate locals. Scotland was no stranger to the plague, suffering multiple waves and thousands of deaths from the start of the Black Death until the mid-17th century. Those infected initially developed a fever, aching and vomiting, before painful buboes would appear and, for around half, death would swiftly follow mere days later. Over the course of two and a half centuries, the plague is estimated to have wiped out half of Europe’s population and killed tens of millions of people across the globe. The plague first emerged in Central Asia in the 1300s and spread like wildfire, before reaching Europe in 1347. For he believes it is bad air, called ‘miasma’, that has caused the plague to ravage the port of Leith once again.īut, although he didn’t know it, George’s true protection was his leather cloak, which was stopping the fleas carrying the plague virus from biting and infecting him, as they had done with so many others. He dreads the thought of what is waiting for him inside more victims dying an incurable, horrible death – with little he can do to help.Īs he watches the dead bodies being removed from the neighbouring huts, he takes a deep breath, comforted by the sweet smell of herbs from inside his beaked mask. George Rae, a plague doctor, is standing Leith outside one of the isolation huts. It is possible that he, intentionally or not, attributed to de Lorme the invention of an object that, most likely, originated instead in Rome during the plague epidemic of 1656.It’s 1645, and the plague that is ravaging Europe has arrived in Scotland. Saint-Martin obtained this information second hand, since he was a child in 1619. The biographer tells us that during the 1619 Paris plague, de Lorme designed a special costume made of Moroccan leather, which “he wore, pants-like, from his feet to his head, with a mask of the same leather where he attached a nose, half foot long, to divert the bad air”. The only contemporary reference to De Lorme’s alleged invention comes from an often inaccurate biographical account, published in 1682 by Michel de Saint Martin. De Lorme’s own writings, however, do not mention any mask or other kinds of protection for plague doctors. That year, so the story goes, Charles de Lorme (1584-1678), personal physician to various members of the French royal household, invented the mask. The myth of the plague doctor mask dates its origin Muratori recommended a gown, preferably made of leather or, in its absence, waxed silk or taffeta, and then mentioned that that “some sometimes have covered their face with a mask, or bautta, to which they added two crystal eyes” In 1714, he published On the Management of Plague in which he discussed the protective equipment that doctors and surgeons assisting plague patients should wear. One of the earliest mentions of masks is in the work of the Italian scholar Ludovico Muratori. Protective masks started to appear in the seventeenth century. It is possible that they protected themselves with cloths impregnated with scented substances, which they kept near their mouth. Medieval plague doctors did not use any mask. If you browse the web, you will find websites dedicated to the history of Venetian masks that claim that the plague doctor mask differs from all others because it was not just a costume but a real protective equipment used by doctors in time of plague epidemics. When you think of a plague doctor you most likely picture in your mind someone wearing a bird-like beak mask, similar - if not the identical - to the Venetian masks that populate many window shops in Venice.
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