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I, despite the username that is a reference to a Homeric epic, am also involved in the study of Medieval History. I am currently working towards my MA at a university in the United Kingdom. If Railtus is okay with it, I'm open to answering queries. My area of specialty is the Black Death of the mid-14th century, and gender/social relations in mid to late Medieval England. If anyone has questions regarding that I feel qualified to answer that Railtus doesn't, I'll do my best! Penthesilea fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 01:34
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puredeez posted:Could someone tell me about plague doctors and their cool costumes? EvanShenck and Rialtus have already responded to this really thoroughly, but to expand: Plague doctors as a concept are much more present in our conception of the plague than in real history. Plague raging to the extent of the mid-14th century was unprecedented, but when people started getting sick and dying, pretty much everyone knew the best thing to do was get out of town. So, those with the means to leave the cities, where it raged for the longest period of time, did so. For example, Boccaccio's Decameron is a collection of stories told by noble men and women who have fled the city to escape the plague. This means that the population dropped, and that those people most able to pay doctors for their visits, weren't present. Also, let's not forget that, while medieval people didn't understand germs as such, they knew that being in close contact with the sick could engender further sickness. Doctors, such as they were, were most likely not going to risk their own lives. Boccaccio mentions in the Decameron that “almost without exception, [the healthy] took a single and very inhuman precaution, namely to avoid or run away from the sick and their belongings”. Many witnesses to the plague noted that contact with the sick was risky business. Boccaccio related an incident in which two pigs, after chewing on the clothes of a dead man, convulsed and died. I think my favorite treatment comes from Tommaso del Garbo's Consilio Contro alla Peste: “notaries, confessors, relations and doctors who visit the plague victims on entering their houses should open the windows…and wash their hands with vinegar and rose water and also their faces…it is also a good idea before entering the room to place in your mouth several cloves and eat two slices of bread soaked in the best wine and then drink the rest of the wine.” In short, there's little evidence of plague doctors as we think of them (goggles, long beaked mask, etc.) as a widespread phenomenon during the Black Death. People would soak rags in vinegar and hold them to their face, or wrap a scarf drenched in wine around their mouth and nose, but that was not the province of doctors, just of people trying to protect themselves from the miasma. Oh, and not that is relates specifically to the questions at hand, but I'm a she.  I'll try to get to more questions later today. Penthesilea fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 11:30
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