Why does the plague doctors portrayed in any movie or photos wore mask with beaks like a Crow?
In: Technology
There were two theories on how diseases worked in the middle ages.
The first was that disease was caused by evil spirits/demons. Ravens will scavenge dead bodies and if you have a lot of dead bodies in an area you will get a lot of ravens eating those bodies. You would also get a lot of rats and bugs – but rats and bugs were considered to be “evil” animals who remained unaffected by disease due to their affiliation with the evil spirits/demons.
Ravens were considered to be clean, “good” animals who *should* have been affected by disease if the evil spirit/demon theory was correct. The fact that ravens were able to eat plague bodies without being affected by plague led people to therefore conclude that something about ravens frightened the evil spirits/demons away.
The raven mask was an attempt to make the plague doctor look like a raven and therefore trick the evil spirits/demons – similar to how a scarecrow works.
The second disease theory was that diseases were caused by bad smells. That is, when you smelled something bad what you were smelling was the disease itself. This might sound kind of dumb but its very similar to them thinking that the disease was something like chlorine gas – chlorine has a very distinct smell and if you breath too much of it then you die. They thought diseases worked the same way.
The theory they had on this was that whatever was causing the bad smell could be neutralized by stuff that smelled good. So they would stuff the beaks of the masks with good smelling stuff in the belief that this would neutralize the bad smells involved with people dying, and therefore neutralize the disease itself.
They didn’t know which of those two theories was correct, and the plague doctor outfit that was worn at the time had the benefit of simultaneously protecting against both theorized causes of disease at the same time.
Back during the Bubonic plague, people believed that the plague was caused by “Bad Air,” (rather than fleas from black rats) so those beaks were stuffed with herbs and sweet smelling flowers to ward of the bad air to protect the doctors around plagued victims.
What is interesting, though, with the mask and beak, they also wore lightly waxed clothing that covered their entire bodies, which did actually protect them somewhat from catching the plague, similar to protective equipment today, it just wasn’t for the reasons they thought
The Plague Doctors wore masks filled with aromatic items (flowers, roses, carnations, herbs, spices…) to keep away the bad smells (“miasma”) which were thought to be the main cause of the Plague. Doctors believed the herbs would counter the “evil” of the smells, thus preventing infection.
Interestingly enough, while the science behind the masks (ie. miasma theory) was unfounded, it was somewhat (emphasis on somewhat.. mostly not) effective in being a physical/water barrier which stopped the spread by fluids.
[Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor_costume)
At the time, the germ theory of disease had yet to be established. The prevailing thinking was the miasma theory of disease, which held that disease was caused by bad air and especially bad smells.
Plague doctor masks were sort of like primitive gas masks. The “beak” was filled with aromatics like herbs and dried flowers to stop the “miasma” from infiltrating. The distinctive costume also openly indicated their profession, which may have been required by law in some cities.
They used to stuff the beak parts with various herbs to help mask the smells and possibly try to ward off the sickness
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