Re: Reversible Garb and Beak-Doctors

[Mike Dullaghan <michael.f.dullaghan@adn.alcatel.com>]

Poster: Mike Dullaghan <michael.f.dullaghan@adn.alcatel.com>


On 13-Aug-98 David KUIJT wrote:
>
>Poster: David KUIJT <kuijt@umiacs.umd.edu>
>
>On Thu, 13 Aug 1998 RowenRhys@aol.com wrote:
>
>> 2.  What exactly is a beak-doctor?  I know that it is associated with the
>> Plague in some way and I have a picture of one...but when my students ask
>> about it I want to be able to inform them.
>
>In the great plague of the middle/late 17th century it was thought that
>wearing a leather hood with glass goggles and a long breathing tube would
>provide some protection from the disease for attending physicians.  In
>fact it did little but make the doctors appear to be bizarre birds.
>
>I'm not sure when the practice originated; the images I remember are all
>from the late 17th century around the time of the Great Fire of London
>(which happened at the same time as a major plague outbreak).  That
>doesn't mean it didn't happen earlier; just that I don't remember it or
>didn't see evidence of it.

If memory serves (and we are depending here on brain cells that
haven't been used since 1979 or so), some of the beak masks were made
of more rigid material so that sponges soaked in vinegar could be put
in the beak to clean the air of evil influences. An idea ahead of its
time -- that was completely ineffective against a disease whose vector
was flea bites. (We won't even discuss the fact that the filter was to
coarse and the anti-bacterial agent too mild to have done much good
anyway.)

Swem Library at William & Mary has a collection of facsimiles of
period documents concerning the plague on the open shelves.

I spent my first Halloween at College reading through that and
Mather's "Wonders of the Invisible World". And you thought I was
normal (for a SCAdian)...

Michael
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