The mask had two small nose holes and was a type of respirator which contained aromatic items. 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.
To purify the air around them, they would burn rosemary and hot tar. These scents, wafting through winding streets of London, were so common during the Great Plague of the 17th century that they became synonymous with the plague itself, historians said.
The miasma theory of contagious disease held that sickness spread through unpleasant aromas. A whiff of 'bad air' could kill you – and the right fragrance just might save your life. A physician wearing a 17th-century plague preventive. Source: Wellcome Collection.
On both sides of the “beak”, two horizontal cuts were made to let air pass through. The beak was meanwhile filled with aromatic herbs to filter and purify the air breathed by the plague doctor intended to prevent contagion.
He described an outfit that included a coat covered in scented wax, breeches connected to boots, a tucked-in shirt, and a hat and gloves made of goat leather. Plague doctors also carried a rod that allowed them to poke (or fend off) victims.
The clothing worn by plague doctors was intended to protect them from airborne diseases during outbreaks of bubonic plague in Europe. It is often seen as a symbol of death and disease.
Sometimes, doctors even burned the flowers and herbs before putting them in the beak. This made smoke that filled the mask for a short time. They believed this would remove the bad smells from the air before the doctor breathed it, preventing the doctors from catching the plague.
The plague caused painful and frightening symptoms, including fever, vomiting, coughing up blood, black pustules on the skin, and swollen lymph nodes. Death usually came within 3 days.
Plague doctors rarely cured patients, instead serving to record death tolls and the number of infected people for demographic purposes. In France and the Netherlands, plague doctors often lacked medical training and were referred to as "empirics".
1. The Black Death. A plague so devastating that simply saying “The Plague” will immediately pull it to the front of your mind, in the middle of the 14th century—from 1347 to 1351—the Black Death remade the landscape of Europe and the world.
Before germs and pathogens were fully understood, people of medieval Europe often equated bad smells with disease, which makes a sort of rudimentary sense when you think about sanitation. So smelling bad and having bad breath, for example, were considered very negative things related to illness.
Changes to the metabolism of the dying person can cause their breath, skin and body fluids to have a distinctive smell similar to that of nail polish remover.
Odour mortis, or the 'smell of death', refers to the chemicals released from the body during decomposition.
Some people compare the putrid stench of a decomposing body to that of rotting meat with rotting fruit undertones. When someone dies, the body immediately begins the decomposition process and the smell of death can begin.
To help ensure that the decomposition odors are permanently removed, set a bowl of vinegar or baking soda near the cleaned area. This will help absorb any lingering smells. Keep in mind that the bowls should be placed well out of reach of pets and young children.
Short answer: NO. We see in the media many people wondering if the plague doctors were evil or bad. So we want to clarify it definitively. This may be due to their terrifying masks and outfits, but they were doctors!
The bautta (more typically bauta) was a mask that early modern Venitians wore to cover their identity. Various paintings of the time show men an women wearing it. The bauta presented an elongated area below the nose, which is vaguely reminiscent of the “bird nose” of Carnival plague doctor masks.
The most famous plague doctor was Nostradamus, who gave advice such as removing infected corpses, get some fresh air, drink clean water, drink a juice made with rose hips, and do not bleed the patient. Nostradamus was a reference to stop the Black Death pandemic.
Covid-19 has devastated our world, but there are a few blessings: it very rarely strikes children, and its infection fatality rate — the percentage of those who are infected who die — is much lower than for many other famous plagues. Epidemic diseases like smallpox frequently killed 30 percent of those infected.
1. Bubonic Plague. Bubonic Plague is a potentially fatal infectious disease caused by the bacterium, Yersinia pestis. Throughout centuries, the disease has erupted several times in different eras, claiming between ten and millions of lives worldwide.
Without the Black Plague, feudalism would persist and the class division in Europe would never end, similar to other parts of the world that stunted their development. One of the most significant features of an overpopulated feudalist society is that labour is cheap and hence easily accessible.
Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia pestis. (The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.)
Rats traveled on ships and brought fleas and plague with them. Because most people who got the plague died, and many often had blackened tissue due to gangrene, bubonic plague was called the Black Death.
The first wave, called the Black Death in Europe, was from 1347 to 1351. The second wave in the 1500s saw the emergence of a new virulent strain of the disease.