Our modern equipment, though, has nothing on the medical garb of the Renaissance. ... Plague doctors also carried a rod that they used to examine patients from a safe distance, ...

Wearing this protective equipment suggests that doctors had grown more concerned about catching plague directly from their patients, rather than from the air itself.

Plague doctors, or at least images of plague doctors, are having a bit of a cultural moment again, roughly 300 years after their actual heyday. They’ve become popular motifs for stickers, pins ...

Despite its fearsome appearance, the plague doctor’s costume — the “personal protective equipment” of the Middle Ages — had a noble purpose. It was intended to enable physicians to ...

The Plague Doctor in full protective equipment. Wikipedia Commons/Public Domain. Medieval people did many things to protect themselves from disease. According to Professor Jennifer McNabb, ...

During the 1918 flu pandemic, doctors could not see a virus and did not have the understanding of contagions that we do today. However, they did understand that illness spread from person to person.

Bernadette Banner. From Plague Doctor to PPE A Brief History of Pandemic Protection Gear. Posted: May 27, 2025 | Last updated: May 27, 2025. More for You ...

Plague doctors also carried a rod that they used to examine patients from a safe distance, in a kind of enforced physical distancing.Whatever its effectiveness, the plague doctor's getup popularized ...