“Plague Doctor” Pin by Angryblue

1.5″ hard enamel pin with orange & yellow glitter on black nickel metal designed by Angryblue for Vend-A-Pin! Series Seven

A plague doctor was a medical physician who treated victims of the plague.

These doctors rarely cured their patients; rather, they got a count of the number of people contaminated for demographic purposes.

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.