Plague Doctor Mask

Description

Authentic Black Plague Doctor Mask.
This crow / haven like mask is made of hard plastic and has an elasic band to hold it in place.Scary mask but ideal for halloween.

A bit of information about the Plague Doctor.
A plague doctor was a medical physician / doctor who treated victims of the plague.They were hired by towns that had many plague victims in times of epidemics. The town or city usually paid their salary, they treated everyone both the wealthy and the poor.However, some plague doctors were known for charging patients and their families extra for special treatments even false cures. They were not normally the best or professionally trained experienced physicians or surgeons, and often were second rate doctors unable to otherwise run a successful medical business.These doctors rarely cured their patients rather, they got a count of the number of people contaminated for demographic purposes.

Plague doctors by their covenant treated plague patients and were known as municipal or “community plague doctors”, whereas “general practitioners” were separate doctors and both might be in the same European city or town at the same time.In France and the Netherlands, plague doctors often lacked medical training and were referred to as “empirics”. In one case, a plague doctor had been a fruit salesman before his employment as a physician.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some doctors wore a beak-like mask which was filled with aromatic items. The masks were designed to protect them from putrid air, which according to the miasmatic theory of disease was seen as the cause of infection. The design of these costumes has been attributed to Charles de Lorme, the chief physician to Louis XIII