In times, the large loss of people (due to the bubonic plague) in a town created an economic disaster. The largest plague epidemic was the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century. The first European epidemic of the bubonic plague dates back to the mid 11th century and is called the Plague of Justinian. The design of these clothes has been attributed to Charles de Lorme, the chief physician to Louis XIII. The masks were designed to protect them from putrid air, which (according to the miasmatic theory of disease) was seen as the cause of infection. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, some doctors wore a beak-like mask which was filled with aromatic items. In one case, a plague doctor had been a fruit salesman before his employment as a physician. In France and the Netherlands, plague doctors often lacked medical training and were referred to as “empirics”. Plague doctors by their covenant treated plague patients and were known as municipal or “community plague doctors”, whereas “general practitioners” were separate doctors and both might be in the same European city or town at the same time. Beak), a plague doctor in seventeenth-century Rome, circa 1656 / Wikimedia Commons These doctors rarely cured their patients rather, they served to record a count of the number of people contaminated for demographic purposes.Ĭopper engraving of Doctor Schnabel (i.e., Dr. Typically they were not professionally trained nor experienced physicians or surgeons rather they were often either second-rate doctors unable to otherwise run a successful medical practice or young physicians seeking to establish themselves in the industry. However, some of the plague doctors were known to charge patients and their families additional fees for special treatments or false cures. Since the city was paying their salary, they treated everyone: both the wealthy and the poor. In times of epidemics, such physicians were specifically hired by towns where the plague had taken hold. The masks were designed to protect them from putrid air, which was seen as the cause of infection.Ī plague doctor was a medical physician who treated victims of the bubonic plague.

Concepts similar to the plague doctor