Plague Doctor

By the end of the 17th century, the great waves of pestilence that had periodically swept Europe since the Black Death had come to an end. Consequently, the medical importance of the plague doctor, such as it was, also subsided.

The costume, however, with its sinister mask and black habit, was firmly entrenched in the public imagination. At some point in the 18th century, it entered the ambiguous and erotic territory of the Venetian Carnevale, where it joined a cast of characters otherwise drawn from the commedia dell'arte.

We may suppose that it served then, as now, as a memento mori. There is something in every festival, but especially carnivals, that is ripe with the promise of loss.

The Plague Doctor

Many a despicable or repulsive practice may be laid at the door of pre-modern medicine. Among them the fact that, so as to avoid troubling the dying with the chance of a peaceful or relaxing death, the medical profession thought it a good idea to dress up in one of the most terrifying costumes known to history.

Not all the time, of course. Only during the plague, when mortality was at its highest, and fear the most unchecked. During the Black Death of the 14th century, visions of skeletons and worm-gnawed reapers danced in everyone's heads. Apparently feeling the need to live up to their ancestors in the matter of macabre visions, doctors of the 17th century invented the image of the Plague Doctor.

It purported to be practical: a waxed cloak and glass goggles to keep away the fumes of the plague, a cane to poke or adjust the patient without direct contact, a mask that contained a filter of herbs so that the doctor might breath without either inhaling the plague or noticing the stench of the dead.

Now, of course, we know that the plague vector was not airborne. The costume, therefore, did no good at all, save to lighten the mind of the physician and oppress that of his patient.