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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  1452 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post:

Cool read, kinda of curious why the article says

    Ultimately, the plague doctors’ outfits—and methods—didn’t make much of a difference. “Unfortunately,” writes historian Frank M. Snowden, “the therapeutic strategies of early modern plague doctors did little to prolong life, relieve suffering, or effect a cure.”

when the outfit is described above

    He described an outfit that included a coat covered in scented wax, breeches connected to boots, a tucked-in shirt, and a hat and gloves made of goat leather. Plague doctors also carried a rod that allowed them to poke (or fend off) victims.

    Their head gear was particularly unusual: Plague doctors wore spectacles, de Lorme continued, and a mask with a nose “half a foot long, shaped like a beak, filled with perfume with only two holes, one on each side near the nostrils, but that can suffice to breathe and carry along with the air one breathes the impression of the [herbs] enclosed further along in the beak.”

It's not modern P.P.E. but I don't see how it wasn't beneficial still