A 1619 outbreak of plague in France, rooted largely in Paris, led to the first medical mask. As the disease killed some 80 percent of those it afflicted, French doctor Charles De Lorme invented an ...

It’s the beak that lends the attire of the medieval plague doctor its surreal quality, but it wasn’t there just to scare Who Was the Real Cleopatra? Fact or Fiction? The Legend of the QWERTY ...

Plague doctors wore spectacles and a mask with a beak-like nose extending ... which allowed the doctor to breathe while filtering the air through the herbs inside, supposedly protecting them ...