^ "17th-century Plague Doctors Were the Stuff of Nightmares".sfn error: no target: CITEREFByrne2008 ( help) JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. ^ Association, American Medical (1900).^ "Imagery From the History of Medicine".^ Center for Advanced Study in Theatre Arts, p.^ Irvine Loudon, Western Medicine: An Illustrated History (Oxford, 2001), p.sfn error: no target: CITEREFByrne2006 ( help) Infectious Diseases Society of America, Volume 11, p."Plague doctors: Separating medical myths from facts". ^ Black, Winston May 2020, All About History 19 ()."Are surgical masks the new plague masks? A history of the not-always-helpful ways we've reacted to pandemics". ^ Füssli's image is reproduced and discussed in Robert Fletcher, A tragedy of the Great Plague of Milan in 1630 (Baltimore: The Lord Baltimore Press, 1898), p.This costume was also worn by plague doctors during the Naples Plague of 1656, which killed 145,000 people in Rome and 300,000 in Naples. Their robes, leggings, hats, and gloves were also made of Morocco leather.
The costume forms the frontispiece of Manget's 1721 work. The Genovese physician, Jean-Jacques Manget, in his 1721 work Treatise on the Plague written just after the Great Plague of Marseille, describes the costume worn by plague doctors at Nijmegen in 1636–1637. L'Orme wrote that the mask had a "nose half a foot long, shaped like a beak, filled with perfume with only two holes, one on each side near the nostrils, but that can suffice to breathe and to carry along with the air one breathes the impression of the drugs enclosed further along in the beak." The garment was impregnated with similar fragrant items as the mask. The garments were first mentioned by a physician to King Louis XIII of France, Charles de L'Orme, who wrote in a 1619 plague outbreak in Paris that he developed an outfit made of Moroccan goat leather, including boots, breeches, a long coat, hat, and gloves modeled after a soldier's canvas gown which went from the neck to the ankle. Often, these plague doctors were the last thing a patient would see before death therefore, the doctors were seen as a foreboding of death. Depictions of the beaked plague doctor rose in response to superstition and fear about the unknown source of the plague. The beaked plague doctor inspired costumes in Italian theater as a symbol of general horror and death, though some historians insist that the plague doctor was originally fictional and inspired the real plague doctors later. The exact origins of the costume are unclear, as most depictions come from satirical writings and political cartoons. The canes were also used to keep people away and to remove clothing from plague victims without having to touch them. Doctors used wooden canes in order to point out areas needing attention and to examine patients without touching them. The wide-brimmed leather hat indicated their profession. Doctors believed the herbs would counter the "evil" smells of the plague and prevent them from becoming infected. The purpose of the mask was to keep away bad smells, known as miasma, which were thought to be the principal cause of the disease. The beak could hold dried flowers (commonly roses and carnations), herbs (commonly lavender and peppermint), camphor, or a vinegar sponge, as well as juniper berry, ambergris, cloves, labdanum, myrrh, and storax. The mask had two small nose holes and was a type of respirator which contained aromatic items. The typical mask had glass openings for the eyes and a curved beak shaped like a bird's beak with straps that held the beak in front of the doctor's nose. The typical costume consists of an ankle-length overcoat and a bird-like beak mask, often filled with sweet or strong-smelling substances (commonly lavender), along with gloves, boots, a wide-brimmed hat, and an outer over-clothing garment. Plague doctor outfit from Germany (17th century)