This may seem a completely random question, but it's been on my mind since I reread Castle Waiting a couple of weeks ago. One of the characters is a doctor who has experience of the plague, and wears the mask at all times. The question came up again today when I was browsing Will's flickrstream and came across this pic of a plague doctor. Searching on google doesn't seem to turn up anything definitive on why there was a beak on the mask, although some people have suggested that the doctors would store herbs there.
One comment here suggests that these masks were where the term "quack doctor" originated from, which kind of made sense, except that a search for the etymology of this term brings up more evidence that it originated from the word quacksalver [sic], an archaic Dutch word (spelled kwakzalver in Modern Dutch).
And none of this brings me any closer to the actual real reason why medieval plague doctors wore beaked masks. Does anyone else know?
Also, if you haven't ever read Castle Waiting, I really recommend it.
on May 20th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
This interested me a while back. There didn't seem to be a definitive answer then, and there doesn't now, the current WP piece reflects this, suggesting a mix of sympathetic magic and practicality:
'A common belief at the time was that the plague was spread by birds. There may have been a belief that by dressing in a bird-like mask, the wearer could draw the plague away from the patient and onto the garment the plague doctor wore. [...] At the very least, it may have served a dual purpose of dulling the smell of unburied corpses, sputum, and ruptured bouboules in plague victims.'
Oddly, though, this paragraph does not mention the pneumonic aspect of the Black Death. Perhaps, simply by distancing the doctor a bit from infected cases and reducing airflow, these did reduce risk to some degree.
By definition, though, I'd have thought Yersinia might have more to say here…
on May 20th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Surprised there isn't a definitive answer; I've certainly been told that it was because the herbs in the beak were supposed to purify the foul airs that were believed to carry the disease. But I don't have a source! So not a lot of help.
on May 21st, 2009 at 12:08 am
I've heard it was the smelly things in the beak reason as well, but again I have no written source. However, it was the nice people of The Real Mary King's Close in Edinburgh who told me, and they sell beaked masks in their gift shop…
on May 22nd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
The trouble with that wikipedia page is that there's no citation for that bit of information. And experience tought me to be very wary of anything presented as "fact" without something to back it up.
However, someone left a comment on my livejournal which does bring us a bit closer to a source, via the wikepdia page about Venetian masks. From the Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases by Michel Tibayrenc:
The Art of the Plague Mask: Charles de Lorme, the first doctor of Louis XIII, imagined the famous protective costume against the plague. "The nose half a foot long, shaped like a beak, filled with perfume with only two holes, one on each side near the nostrils, but that can suffice to breathe and carry along with the air one breathes the impression of the drugs enclosed further along in the beak. Under the coat we wear boots made in Moroccan leather (goat leather) from the front of the breeches in smooth skin that are attached to said boots, and a short sleeved blouse in smooth skin, the bottom of which is tucked into the breeches. The hat and gloves are also made of the sam skin…with spectacles over the eyes."
The only problem is that I can't find any more information about this Charles de Lorme chap (although I've not made an extensive search). There is a source cited in the encylopaedia, but because some of the pages aren't included online I don't know if it even matches up to the footnotes I found, because I don't know if the footnotes are all numbered consecutively throughout the book or throughout each section instead. They say that the information came from an article in Science journal in 2001, so even that isn't a contemporary source anyway!
So I'm still hoping for a more definitive answer.
on Jul 2nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
i have also been researching thisi think the answer is that the microbes or virus would come to the beak of birds making it so that the virus would go on to the masks of the doctors(while also using a differet cure at the same time)
on Oct 6th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I read that the beak was stuffed with herbs and spices to purify the air the doctor breathed.
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 5:04 am
I was told that they put viles of vinegar in the long nose of the mask, not herbs or perfume.
on Jan 24th, 2010 at 6:31 am
When people were infected with the plague they would start to smell really bad(not to mention back then you took a bath about once a month if you were lucky). Therefore, doctors would often put herbs and perfumes in the long nose so they wouldn't have to smell the oder of the people. Also, if I remember correctly, they had something that they would burn and breath in the fumes of(some other herb maybe) before they visited the people.
on Oct 17th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
I was once told a when I was a teenager that the nursery rhyme "ring around the rosies.. pocket full of posies.." and I think you know the rest, was based on the plague itself.. from what I understand it was highly believed back in those times that the plague was carried on the wind through the stench it gave once a person became infected. I was told it was also believed that if you carried with your potporie and herbs to hold at your nose that that would prevent you from becoming infected.. hence the pocket full of posies.. obviously this was not true though which is why the nursery rhyme ends with ashes ashes we all fall down.. any who it seems a bit off topic but the reason i mention this is because the poem itself is, I think, a small amount of proof that the masks beaks were indeed filled with scented herbs and spices to keep out the smell.. as I have also been told. ^.^
on Oct 17th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
And I've looked through this artical here.. not sure if it's a great sorce or not however it is a very interesting read pertaining to the plague doctors and the garments they wore. Enjoy! http://ezinearticles.com/?Venetian-Masks,-History-of-the-Plague-Doctor-Mask-&id=4258161
on Feb 28th, 2011 at 12:01 am
Back in the middle ages people believed that the black plague was an air bourne disease. When thousnds started to die, some villages employed a doctor just to cure people of the plague. The doctors coated thier clothing in wax, and wore thick layers of leather to prevent the disease from reaching their skin. They also wore big masks, the eyeholes were covered in glass or net and the beak like nose was filled with cotton and herbs, to act as a filter, relieve the smell and some people think that the doctors thought the herbs had medicinal qualities.
on Mar 22nd, 2011 at 7:26 pm
The masks contained floral herbs thought to make the doctor immune to getting the plague. Of course it didn't.
on Jun 18th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Different doctors probably kept different things in their beaks according to preference. It would probably be only for the smell as they had no idea what a microbe or a virus was back then. They did not even know about cells. True they could have figured that the disease was spread by the air and then used the nose as a filter, but without a true source that could be modern knowledge of the germ theory of disease contaminating our collective historical hypotheses.
I'd say the most likely answer at this point is to keep things in to ward away the smell. Most people have not smelled a rotting corpse and will gag at smells like dog poop. Imagine being surrounded constantly in the 1300s by bloody pus-filled corpses in sewage and trash-strewn streets. Anybody coming up to you who is alive probably smells horrible and has the plague themselves.
Nothing a little Lysol spray can't handle right?