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Bubonic Plague: Why a Doctor Invented the First Face Mask
This copper engraving shows the face mask and clothing designed by plague doctor Charles de Lorme (1584–1678). The elaborate beak mask was the first historical attempt used to keep physicians safe from contagion while treating plague victims. Plague was a reoccurring feature in European life for centuries after the Black Death of 1347-1353, which decimated over forty percent of the population.
The mask itself was filled with all kinds of herbs and tinctures — amber, cloves, camphor, rose petals, myrrh, laudanum — to protect the doctors from breathing contaminated air.
Europeans at the time believed the disease was airborne, which it was not. They had no way way to assess the source of the plague, completely unaware the Black Death had originally arrived as a pestilence from fleas on rats transported along trading routes by ship from Asia and the Middle East.
Along with the broad-brimmed hat and bird-like beak, doctors wore a cape of leather or waxed material, all used as protection when these doctors attended patients in quarantine. They also commonly carried a cane to allow them to diagnose and examine patients without direct contact.
It was a frightening mask to those the physician came to see.
