# Dis Those Funky Costumes Prevent The Plague?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 13, 2004, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841 "2004-04-13T19:43:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2004, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841/1 "2004-04-13T19:43:17Z")
Sorry, I don’t ahve a picture, but in 16th century Italy, physicians treating victimes of the black death (bubonic plague) wore a weird looking costume. It was a leather poncho, with an attached helmet that looked like the head of a bird. The “beak” was filled with aromatic herbs, and the “eyes” were closed with crystallenses. The phycician also wore long leather gloves. Presumably, allof this protection should have shielded a man from either the fleas that spread the common form of the “Black Death”-seems likeit would have been pretty good protection against the pneumonic version of the palgue as well.
How come they never made the connection between being securely clothed (in such fashion) and not contracting the plague?
I’d love if somebody couldpost a pic of that anti-plague suit! 🆒
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2004, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841/2 "2004-04-13T20:36:24Z")
The aromatic herbs, I thought, were to fight off the stench, not actually to prevent infection.
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### Author:  [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2004, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841/3 "2004-04-13T20:58:44Z")
I think, back then, they had the idea that stenches _carried_ disease. And, therefore, using herbs to block the “bad” smells would prevent one from becoming infected.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2004, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841/4 "2004-04-13T22:23:08Z")
> [@ralph124c](#):
>
> I’d love if somebody couldpost a pic of that anti-plague suit! 🆒
[http://www.carnivalofvenice.com/documento.asp?DocID=17](http://www.carnivalofvenice.com/documento.asp?DocID=17)
[http://www.phoenix5.org/essaysry/rvycj1204NotCancer.html?FACTNet](http://www.phoenix5.org/essaysry/rvycj1204NotCancer.html?FACTNet)
I own a papier-mache plague doctor mask I got in venice - makes a cool halloween costume!
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### Author:  [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2004, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841/5 "2004-04-13T22:31:20Z")
the miasmatic theory of infection (that bad air caused disease) prevailed into the 19th c. Even when the existance of microbes was posited some refused to believe it - Florence Nightingale for one - and clung to the old theories.
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### Author:  [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2004, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841/6 "2004-04-14T15:20:30Z")
> [@ralph124c](#):
>
> Sorry, I don’t ahve a picture, but in 16th century Italy, physicians treating victimes of the black death (bubonic plague) wore a weird looking costume. It was a leather poncho, with an attached helmet that looked like the head of a bird. The “beak” was filled with aromatic herbs, and the “eyes” were closed with crystallenses. The phycician also wore long leather gloves. Presumably, allof this protection should have shielded a man from either the fleas that spread the common form of the “Black Death”-seems likeit would have been pretty good protection against the pneumonic version of the palgue as well.
> How come they never made the connection between being securely clothed (in such fashion) and not contracting the plague?
> I’d love if somebody couldpost a pic of that anti-plague suit! 🆒
I am not a doctor or epidemiologist (IANADOE?), but I would guess that such a costume might reduce the chance of contracting plague but certainly wouldn’t remove it. It seems quite unlikely that the “physician” wore his costume 24 hours a day, so he would still be exposed to fleas as soon as he took the costume off (since the rats roamed the cities carrying the fleas along with them). I would also guess that he would want to be reasonably comfortable breathing and would as a result have relatively large holes in his mask.
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### Author:  [@nocturnal\_tick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nocturnal_tick)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2004, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841/7 "2004-04-14T19:29:57Z")
IANAE on this matter either, and this fact may not have any bearing on this particular scenario but weren’t many of those who “worked” with the Plague already immune to the disease?
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### Author:  [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2004, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841/8 "2004-04-14T21:23:04Z")
At the time, there was a general consensus that bad odors caused disease, that disease was often due to “bad air.” The doctor’s beaky-lookin’ mask was intended not only to improve the odor of hospitals, graveyards, and sickrooms, but to somehow filter the air through herbs to improve it.
The germ theory of disease was not yet in operation. The mask was somewhat useful in preventing the spread of airborne disease – the filtration aspect did work, to some extent, in that sense – but from the flea-borne version, it was no more protection than an umbrella would be from a nuclear bomb.
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### Author:  [@Doug\_Bowe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_Bowe)
#### Post date: [April 14, 2004, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dis-those-funky-costumes-prevent-the-plague/239841/9 "2004-04-14T21:41:15Z")
Nobody else has said it so I will…
The “bad air” theory survives today in the name of one disease…malaria