The pouch would be stuffed with loose rags or straw and scented with some aromatic. The beaks were more like tubes or pouches stitched onto the hood. Plague doctors costume ‘Costume d’un penitent a Sur, canton des Grisons (Suisse). The few we are reasonably sure were used in the field do not look like what the plague doctor is in the public imagination. However, it can be difficult to trace the provenance of these items, and many have proven to be reproductions or theatrical costume pieces and not working medical garments. There are a few surviving examples of plague doctor hoods used during the Great Plague period of the 17th century, mostly in southern France, Italy and Switzerland. Plague doctors costume ‘Costume d’un chirurgien quarantenaire du Lazaret de Marseille, 1819 Hundreds of men worked in the profession known as ‘plague doctors’, but only a few enterprising souls wore the full Medico della Peste costume and most did not look as cool as the popular image. Most covered their faces at some point, especially by the late 17th century. Thousands of doctors treated plague victims. ![]() Muesum replica of a late 17th century Medico della Peste hood, provenance contested Further proof that the Early Modern period was awful and the Middle Ages get a bad rap. ![]() 1630 puts us smack dab in the centre of the Early Modern period (aka the Late Renaissance, aka The Enlightenment, aka Birth of the Age of Reason). L’Orme was working on his Medico della Peste costume almost 300 years after the start of the Black Death. Dr Birdman was not born out of some Dark Age Bosch nightmare but out of medical curiosity.Īnd it certainly was not an invention of the Middle Ages. L’Orme was known for asking questions and challenging the status quo. Most unusually, however, he was a university-educated doctor at a time when most physicians bought a pharmacopoeia, hung a shingle, and called it a day. He was the physician to the French court for three generations of kings. He lived to be 94 in an age when most people were dead by 50, which he attributed to regularly consuming antimony. Miasma remained part of the popular understanding of disease well into the 20th century. ![]() We can laugh at this, but miasma was the accepted medical paradigm for over 1,500 years and was only overthrown with the rise of Germ Theory in the 1860s. This was because the prevailing wisdom at the time was that plague was spread by miasmatic air. The face cover wasn’t a super stylised ceramic or paper mache beak but a waxed leather over-the-head hood with a pouch for aromatics at the nose area. Almost from the beginning the Medico della Peste was being satirised. The idea was to create an impenetrable barrier where the contagion would not have contact with the physician’s body. It was just a theory on protective equipment for doctors modelled after lightweight waxed leather armour. He certainly did not act as a plague doctor, which I will explain more below. We have no evidence L’Orme wore it or even treated plague victims. The get-up we know as the plague doctor or Medico della Peste costume was first theorised by Dr Charles de L’Ormein 1630.
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