But what’s the reality behind the iconic mask? Not Just Any Doctor Plague doctors were government contractors. When the plague struck a European town, the local government hired a 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 ...

With their dark, heavy robes and beaked masks, the plague doctor will forever be associated with the bubonic plague, even though they first appeared in France and Italy in the 1600s, nearly 300 ...

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 ...

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 ...

a mask with a long, bird-like beak, which was stuffed with dried flowers, herbs, and spices. (Today, you might recognize it from the “plague doctor” costumes worn during the Carnival of Venice ...