How doctors treated the plague

Of course, the medicine was not a cure at all. Over 68, officially died of the plague in London alone; the true figure is probably nearer , Now we know it is likely that the disease spread through bacteria carried by fleas living on the black rats common in towns, especially poor areas. But then, its cause was a terrifying mystery. Can't play the file above? Listen to the audio clip here. By using this site, you agree we can set and use cookies.

For more details of these cookies and how to disable them, see our cookie policy. Doctors began to question Galenic medicine, they relied more on observation, and they paid more attention to anatomy. There were also improvements in medical ethics, public health, and hospitals.

Legan, Joseph A. Senior Honors Projects, To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately, you may Download the file to your hard drive. Advanced Search. Privacy Copyright. JMU Web privacy statement. Skip to main content. Related: The science of the 10 plagues. The plague doctor getup, and especially the beaked mask, has become one of the most popular costumes in the "Carnevale," or Carnival of Venice in Italy.

In fact, some historians have argued that the beaked plague doctor was nothing but a fictional and comedic character at first, and that the theatrical version inspired genuine doctors to use the costume during the outbreaks of and Without more informative written reports and images from this period, which can help us understand under what circumstances the outfit was used, it is impossible to tell which came first: the plague doctor's protective outfit, or the carnival costume.

Physicians of the later medieval and early modern periods aren't represented by a single outfit. Ideas about the cause and spread of plague changed over several centuries, as did the clothing worn by plague doctors and the methods they used to treat the disease.

Plague prevention and care came from college-trained physicians, surgeons, barbers, apothecaries, midwives, herbalists and priests. These doctors were working long before germ theory and antibiotics and were unable to cure plagues. However, they deserve more credit than they usually receive, because they recognized the spread and symptoms of plague and gave people hope in an age of constant medical crisis. Related: Black Death survey reveals incredible devastation wrought by plague.

According to Susan L. Einbinder's book "After the Black Death" University of Pennsylvania Press, , many plague doctors wrote short books, known as plague treatises, to advise their peers and the literate public on plague prevention. According to Einbinder, another early plague doctor called Prof.

Gentile da Foligno from Bologna, Italy, died of the plague in , after writing several casebooks on the subject. After the outbreak of the Black Death, doctors and scientists immediately tried to fit the disease into their existing understanding of medicine.

In both Europe and the Middle East this meant defining the plague in terms of the theory of four bodily humors blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile , first developed by the ancient physicians Hippocrates and Galen and further explained by Arabic and Latin physicians in the middle ages.