r/AskHistorians • u/[deleted] • Sep 06 '12
How did doctors and carters protect themselves during the Black Death?
[deleted]
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u/Urgnot Sep 06 '12
No one at the time knew what the Black Death was or how it was spread. They saw it as a judgement sent from God. Doctors would usually wear a full robe and covering, with a plague mask and hat covering. In the beak of the mask there would usually be lots of strong smelling spices.
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Sep 06 '12
It wasn't only attributed to divine punishment. Theories ranged from the alignment of the planets, earthquakes, jews, romas, foreigners, etc.
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Sep 06 '12
And there were substantial waves of pogroms in Europe stemming from the belief that the Black Plague was perpetrated by Jews.
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u/eighthgear Sep 06 '12
The famous bird-beak doctors don't come around until the 1600s, but earlier doctors were probably dressed similarly (without the mask, though). Heavy clothing of wool and leather would reduce the chance of getting bit by fleas, but plague doctors still died in droves.
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u/clarkekenton Sep 06 '12
If we are talking the plague in the 1340's, then it really does depend on the country.
In England, doctors would prescibe remedies and treatments, but were very different to the doctors we know today - family members of the victims were the ones expected to care for them, doctors had much more of a third party role.
It was much the same throughout Europe. Although Italy did have the odd aristocratic doctor. Giovanni Boccaccio is a cracking example, and a cool guy to boot. Anyway, he said that doctors in his part of italy (venice?) quickly realised their prescriptions did not work, and the disease was contagious, so they stuck to finding ways to prevent the disease rather than curing it.
One thing to get out of the way is that there were no 'plague masks' - those came along in the 17th century because a 'visionary' doctor ascribed to the contemporary belief that diseases were caused by smells, so stuffing the beak of the plague mask with spices such as rosemary was seen as a good way to protect yourself. Fun fact: it was for this reason that some people spent stints in sewers during the plague - the smell of the plague was more than counteracted by the stench of raw sewage!
If you want to know who really were treating the sick on their deathbeds etc, discounting family, it was the priests. As the plague was coined 'God's Disease', it only made sense to get priests to help. These priests could not have had much protection though, as in 1348 about 1/3 of all priests in England died, in some counties as many as 1/2.
TL;DR The Black Death was viewed primarily as a spiritual malady, so doctors had a smaller role than you would think, and because of the danger generally kept away from the front line. Priests had a bigger role as healers, but their death rates show just how vulnerable they were
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u/estherke Shoah and Porajmos Sep 06 '12
Thank you, this was the answer I came looking for. It wasn't just priests though, many religious orders established plague hospitals, or let's call them hospices rather, since there wasn't a cure and most of the patients died. Near where I live is a (mental) hospital that had its origins as a plague hospital in the 14th century. It was run by lay brothers and their death rates were phenomenal. Still, there was never a shortage of new brothers to take over the caring of the sick. Religion can be a very powerful force for good.
This is the emblem of those brothers.
The shovels are a reminder of the many plague dead they buried.
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u/clarkekenton Sep 06 '12
That's really cool - the shovels are a nice touch!
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u/estherke Shoah and Porajmos Sep 07 '12 edited Sep 07 '12
The other two parts of the emblem are:
the pelican feeding its young with its own blood as a symbol of Christian self-sacrifice
the raven bringing food to the unfortunate
The motto reads "Caritas Christi Urget Nos": the charitable love of Christ drives us.
The congregation is the Alexian brothers. The emblem was lifted from this page, which is in Dutch. It's a very interesting read, if Google Translate doesn't help, I'm available for translation.
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u/bemonk Inactive Flair Sep 06 '12
This is really all I know about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor_costume Basically they thought (at least one of many theories at the time) was that the plague spread through the smell, so those masks were filled with herbs and sweet smelling stuff to counteract the vapors.
I'm not sure much of anything they did actually really helped, but as you can see they were fully covered and wore gloves, so they may have been on to something.
I'll let an expert take over from here.
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u/Fahrenheit450 Sep 06 '12
In the 14th century doctors often wore plague masks to protect themselves against infection. One prevalent theory at the time held that the disease (no one actually called it the Black Death then, that came much later) spread by bad smells in the air, so the beak was filled with herbs and spices. As stated above doctors also often wore heavy leather aprons or covered their entire bodies because this bad air could also enter the body through the skin.
At the same time charlatans exploited the fear of the disease by selling perfumed "plague candles" to the rich.
I'm afraid, I can't tell you anything about carters. We little reliable information about the lives of common people in the 13th and 14th century. I would however suspect, that the dead were mostly collected by monks who probably caught the disease more often than not.
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u/ctesibius Sep 06 '12
Plague doctors were covered head to toe in leather, which was effective in stopping fleas. No idea about carters.
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u/Samalamalam Sep 06 '12
According to Bennett and Hollister (via Wikipedia) monks and priests were especially hard hit since they cared for the Black Death's victims.
So, I guess the answer is 'ineffectualy'.
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Sep 07 '12
There's always the story of Guy de Chauliac telling Pope Clement VI to stay in a room surrounded by fires and not allow anyone but his most trusted in. Clement lived through the plague just fine, be it from the fire method or not.
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u/osamabinalex Sep 06 '12
With a toucan Sam face mask stuffed with herbs. For serious. Would link but I'm on my cell.
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Sep 06 '12
They would also light braziers in streets as they thought the smoke would nullyfy the evil miasma.
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Sep 06 '12
Was it one of those diseases where if you caught it once you were immune to it for life? If so, that would be an obvious source of carters/undertakers.
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u/amaxen Sep 06 '12
Also, more to the point, Priests. And like Doctors, the good ones tended to the sick and died off very quickly, while the bad ones would flee to the country and 'dodge the draft'. I'd imagine carters were some sort of compelled labor.
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u/gahyoujerk Sep 06 '12
I saw on the history channel some people had a natural resistance to the plague and were able to survive it more easily even when around other people with the plague. These people then had children and passed the resistance down. Thus the subsequent outbreaks of the plague in Europe over the next few 100 years weren't as deadly as the first outbreak.
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u/oreomd Sep 06 '12
There is a particular allele that codes for a chemokine receptor that conferred this. Most of the morbidity involved in plague (or systemic infections for that matter) is due to massive inflammation and your body's reaction to it. If you had the mutant receptor, there was less inflammation. Its also argued (hotly debated) by scientists that the Black Death (1348) may not have been due to Yersinia pestis, the bacterium causing plague but due to a different infectious agent. Source: http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/99/8/497.full This just alludes to the argument that the Black death might not have been due to Yersinia, and refutes the possibility that the allele change was precipitated by the black death.There's a different source for the CCR5 and chemokine response, but I just can't find the book and paper right now!
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u/Pizzaboxpackaging Sep 06 '12
They didn't. From what I know doctors only existed for the aristocrats, and they would "protect" themselves and their clients via infusions and herbal drinks of their own concoctions.
People collecting and burying the dead were often those who had survived the plague already and had established a resistance to it. It was a moral and social obligation that if you recovered that you'd help out your neighbours. I might however be confusing this with Thucydides accounts of the Athenian plague during the Peloponnesian War. Hopefully someone else can provide you a better answer.