Zedek the plague doctor zedekthepd
In addition to recording the number of casualties in logbooks, doctors were responsible for documenting the last wishes of their patients. Plague doctors’ primary duties were to treat and cure plague victims and to bury the dead.
During plagues, towns, villages, or cities hired plague doctors. European doctors specialized in treating plague victims, and the Black Death is the most famous example. One of the most enigmatic figures to come out of the Middle Ages is the plague doctor. These protective costumes were worn by plague doctors when they treated plague patients. People were scared of the outfit because seeing it was a sign of death. Plague doctors wore this costume during the Plague of 1656, which killed 145,000 people in Rome and 300,000 in Naples. They wore morocco leather on their robes, leggings, hats, and gloves. Nijmegen plague doctors also wore beaked masks. Manget’s 1721 work features this costume as its frontispiece. Jean-Jacques Manget describes the costume worn by plague doctors in Nijmegen in 1636-1637 in his 1721 treatise Treatise on the Plague. The first Plague Doctor’s from the 17th century at the German Museum of Medical History in Ingolstadt.Įven though the mask had two holes, one on each side near the nostrils, Lorme wrote that it could suffice to breathe while carrying the impression of the drugs contained in the removable beak with one’s breath. Like the beak mask, this garment was impregnated with fragrant stuff. The overclothes, leggings, gloves, boots, and hat were waxed leather. The costume consisted of a bird mask with spectacles and a long leather (Moroccan or Levantine) or waxed canvas gown. The “beak doctor” costume is thought to have been invented by Charles de Lorme, who adopted in 1619 the idea of a full-body protective garment modeled after a soldier’s armor. The plague doctor used to wear a waxed coat, a sort of protective goggles and gloves, the beak of their masks contained aromatic substances. They were also used to keep people away, take the pulse of patients without touching them, and remove clothing from plague victims. To examine patients without touching them, they used wooden canes to point out problem areas. Plague doctors wore wide-brimmed leather hats with their costumes. The beak mask held spices thought to purify air, the wand was used to avoid touching patients, 1656. To prevent the Plague from infecting them, doctors believed the herbs would control the “evil” smell. This was later proved false by the germ theory.
People believed that bad smells, called miasmas, were the main cause of diseases in earlier times. The beak could have dried flowers (such as carnations and roses), herbs (mint), spices, camphor, or vinegar sponges. There were two small holes on the mask, and the mask was a type of breathing apparatus containing aromatic items. The mask was constructed with glass openings for the eyes and a curved beak shaped like a bird’s beak attached to straps that held the beak in position in front of the doctor’s nose. A Plague Doctor, from Jean -Jacques Manget ‘Traite de la peste’ 172