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Apparently I badly want to go on my “stop making fun of plague doctors, they were ahead of their time and doing the best they could with the primitive equipment they had available” rant.
They weren’t stupid.
They shoved herbs in their breathing hose because they knew the air was bad and hoped it would help, and *they were right* in theory. The plague itself was not an airborn virus, but they couldn’t know that and it wasn’t the only thing killing people at the time anyway, and they covered *all* their bases. If they’d had the technological knowhow to make air tanks, or even better air filters, they would’ve. They just made the best air filters they could.
What we think they wore isn’t exactly what they wore, and what they actually wore would later be repurposed into scuba suits (and thus spacesuits too) and *actual hazmat suits*, because the theory was sound, the materials were just lacking, and honestly what they did with the materials they had was hardcore.
they wore full face protection which avoids the most obvious mucosal transmission routes
INCLUDING GLASS IN THE EYEHOLES. They invented safety goggles before most of the world had nailed down corrective eye glasses yet
they wore additional head protection to cover seams in their mask/hoods
they oiled and waxed all their clothes to make it fluid-resistant
they wore separate but tight fitting equally if not more fluid-resistant gloves and/or armcuffs so they could keep hand contamination to a minimum even when dressing/undressing AND they only wore the suit in areas they thought was contaminated and took it off before entering uncontaminated areas
they may have used herbed vinegar to clean, and if the stories are true this was clever because 1) it’s available and portable 2) pretty effective as far as medieval disinfectants go versus the damage it does the the user (as opposed to what they had for bleach at the time, and the actual percentage level in alcohols at the time which was mostly insufficient for task as well as being needed for more important things); vinegar is *still* a decent disinfectant even now
It honestly took doctors well into the twentieth century to get that level of obsessive attention to hygiene and cross-contamination back. A whole lot of babies and mothers wouldn’t’ve died, for instance, if a plague doctor instead of an obstetrician supported the birth because A PLAGUE DOCTOR WOULD KNOW TO WASH THEIR GODDAMNED HANDS.
Actual plague doctor’s outfits:
Who was responsible for turning plague doctors into laughingstocks instead of primative but honoured medical and scientific predecessors anyway?
Was it the Victorians? It was probably the Victorians. Those pretentious sanctimonious jerks ruined everything.
#i did not realize people made fun of plague doctors #ive mostly seen people freaked out by the aesthetic #they always seemed to me like a bittersweet example of humanity scared shitless #and still trying really really hard #i’d get very poetic about it #sometimes its a stare out the window and empathize with plague doctors kind of day and that’s just how it is #that’s just how growing up is #i feel like thanks victorians is a strong contender for thanks obama’s throne (tags via
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cicadianrhythm)
The waxed suit is actually incredibly smart, and very effective! We know the fleas were what was transmitting the plague, and while they didn’t, those waxed suits would have prevented any fleas from crawling on them and transmitting the plague.
Nostradamus, the man now more famous for his weird occultism and prophecies, would have been much more famous in the renaissance for a different reason: he was a plague doctor, and a highly effective one at that. After losing his wife and two children to the plague, he joined the doctors and travelled around treating patiengs. He told patients to drink boiled water and eat a “rose pill” he created from rose hips (very high in vitamin C; you can see how this would have helped patients), sleep in clean beds (clean beds would have no fleas), and leave town as soon as there were infected people cropping up.
Humans aren’t stupid, and are immensely creative and intelligent when faced with problems. Behaviourly modern humans, humans we can define as being when we became like us in intelligence and behaviour, can be found at least 40,000 years ago: that means, at least 40,000 years ago, you could teach any human our language and technology today in 2019, and they’d understand it just fine. With a little explanation they could understand and use a smartphone. Humans at least 40,000 years ago were just as smart as us; they just didn’t have all of the information we have. But not having information doesn’t make you stupid. And you’ll find many, many examples of incredibly intelligent humans in the past, working with what they have.