6/5/2023 0 Comments Was the plague doctor realThe canes were also used to keep people away, to remove clothing from plague victims without having to touch them, and to take a patient’s pulse. They used wooden canes in order to point out areas needing attention and to examine patients without touching them. The beak doctor costume worn by plague doctors had a wide-brimmed leather hat to indicate their profession. His nose-case is filled with herbal material to keep off the plague. 1721, of a plague doctor of Marseilles (introduced as ‘Dr Beaky of Rome’). 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, before it was disproved by germ theory. The beak could hold dried flowers (including roses and carnations), herbs (including mint), spices, camphor, or a vinegar sponge. The mask had two small nose holes and was a type of respirator which contained aromatic items. The mask had glass openings in 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. This theory of disease believed that people got sick from “bad air”, and so what this mask’s long nose was designed to do was the wearers would put pleasant smelling herbs and light then on fire to prevent Miasma from being inhaled by the wearer by “cleansing” the “bad air”. This mask was designed to fight against the Miasma theory. During medieval Europe, there were two main theories of how diseases were spread and contracted: the Four Humors theory, and the Miasma theory. Plague Doctors have become figures of impending doom and representations of death, disease and medical malpractice, many villages actually dreaded the visit of plague doctor(s) despite their good intentions, some even believed plague doctors were harbingers of disease and death rather than the supposed cure.This was the first design of the Plague Doctor’s mask. as it was believed that bad smells or “miasma” was responsible for disease and that good smells could word off or even cure disease. Plague Doctors are most well known for their attire, most notably their eerie, bird-like masks that were modeled after the skulls of ravens and were filled with aromatic items such as dried flowers, herbs, ambergris, myrrh etc. It is unclear where plague doctors truly came from, but it is believed that they were employed by European royalty to attend to peasants who were too poor to afford real medical service and to record death tolls once the bubonic plague started to spread. Many plague doctors weren’t even actual physicians, but instead volunteers, peasants needing work or even “quack” physicians that lacked actual medical licenses but wanted to practice medicine regardless. Plague Doctors practiced everything from bloodletting, aromatherapy, chemistry (via the creation of “snake oil” serums and potions) to even surgery in a futile attempt to cure disease. Plague Doctors practiced many forms of pseudoscience in order to cure the bubonic plague and other prevalent diseases such as leprosy during a time when medical science was in its infancy. The user is a Plague Doctor, a physician from the dark ages, specifically medieval Europe that treated those infected with the bubonic plague during epidemics, rarely curing them due to a poor understanding of how diseases work during the time and were instead mostly used to record death tolls for demographic purposes.
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