To people who understand how bacteria and viruses spread, and who are used to seeing modern healthcare workers in protective equipment like surgical gowns and respirator masks, the plague doctor ...

Their head gear was particularly unusual: Plague doctors wore spectacles, de Lorme continued, and a mask with a nose “half a foot long, shaped like a beak, filled with perfume with only two ...

Each piece of the suit—the hat, the bird-like mask, the red glass eyes ... in puddings and pastries) or wax. Doctors thought the suet could draw the plague away from the flesh of the infected ...

You’ve seen them before: mysterious figures, clad from head to toe in oiled leather, wearing goggles and beaked masks. The plague doctor costume looks like a cross between a steampunk crow and ...

Believing the plague spread through miasma, or bad air, doctors wore elaborate costumes with beak-like masks filled with aromatic substances to protect themselves. Also called 'Black Death' and ...

A 1619 outbreak of plague in France, rooted largely in Paris, led to the first medical mask. As the disease killed some 80 percent of those it afflicted, French doctor Charles De Lorme invented an ...

In your feverish state, you see a strange-looking man wearing a beak-like mask ... you have the plague. So, where did these iconic outfits come from? Stephanie Honchell Smith explores the history of ...