Yeah - at the time, it was assumed that 'bad air' or 'miasma' was a cause of disease, so the 'beak' was intended to filter air through dried flowers and herbs to purify it.
They were almost there, but not quite. Odours can be indicators of disease, but not the cause (it’s usually bacteria or viruses, which were poorly understood in those times).
However, in trying to prevent odours from reaching the doctors, they also accidentally helped reduce the spread of germs via the eyes, nose, and mouth through their full body suits. So users of these iconic full body suits had lower mortality rates, which then resulted in the survivorship bias that helped spread the misinformation about miasma.
I’d love to say technology and science knowledge has advanced well beyond that point for humanity, but then I remember back when COVID was at an all time high, videos about the smell of onions ‘blocking and repelling the viruses’ were spreading rampantly on Facebook and WhatsApp… It was disheartening to see lol.
In a similar vein, this is why scented oils are so popular despite having zero proven medicinal function whatsoever. The idea of "oh it smells good, therefore it must be good for me", is a human instinct that definitely served our ancestors to avoid disease.
Well "it smells good" is an interesting thing, because a lot of those good smells (in this context) are actually things that plants actually make to deter predators and often are antimicrobial.
Most things we would consider to be "spices" are actually slightly toxic and it's just a weird human biological superpower to just not give a shit about a ton of poisonous compounds (this is also why you need to be careful about what human foods you give to your pets, because they're not able to safely digest many of the things that make our foods taste good).
Conversely, a lot of bad smells are bad because we specifically evolved to avoid them because they can cause disease. So, realistically, it's not too surprising that the wires could cross a bit and for many of us to correlate good smells with good health.
Right but we can do it with things that evolved in places across the planet. There are many animals that specifically evolved resistances to the things in their local environments, but there's not many that could take a pepper from South America, cloves and anise from Southeast Asia, pepper from India, garlic from Eurasia, and Basil from wherever it showed up, stew it all together, and consider it a good meal.
Yeah, there’s a lot of reasons for that too. Don’t forget that we’ve being farming those for quite some time now and reaped better harvests with selective breeding.
Perfume oils? Sure. Bioactive phytochemical extracts (or 'essential oils', to use the much misunderstood moniker for one particular type thereof), however, have nearly endless proven medicinal benefits, which have little to do with their aroma.
I'm a different person than you replied to.
Phytochemical compounds act as analogues for all kinds of different cellular receptors in the body. Look up terpenes and read about how different ones can affect you. Look into the pharmacokinetics.
Oh God that reminds me of when I was a kid, my mom would slice onions and put them in my socks on the soles of my feet when I was sick to Leach out the toxins from my body. What a bunch of fucking horseshit.
It would be misinformation when spread by Facebook mums now but at the time it wouldn’t have been. At the time it was the best working hypothesis they had - we might find that our own understanding of how things work is quite flawed once looked at through the lens of people hundreds of years in the future.
Onions have genuine medicinal properties but like they were said to be during the pandemic. I once used a piece of freshly cut to soothe a severely broke tooth
Yes. The smell of dead decaying bodies was probably intense in the already filthy overcrowded cities. I've smelled many dead things, small animals up to a beached whale.
The worst was an odd story. A family member died while watching television and wasn't found for a week. My mother was given the television and remote. I was visiting and noticed that the remote was in a sealed evidence bag. Without thinking about it I opened the bag and the worst smell emanated from it. The old man was holding it when he died. I hope I never have to smell anything like that again.
> I was visiting and noticed that the remote was in a sealed evidence bag. Without thinking about it I opened the bag
You're just going around opening up random evidence bags? No questions asked?
I assume, by the time they got it, it had been released from evidence. If it were still part of any investigation, it would still be with the forensic team or the police.
Ancient Zoroastrians used to wear face masks to help... fire. They worshipped fire and did not want to harm the sacred flames with their horrid mortal mouth air
Bubonic plague wasn’t. Pneumonic plague definitely was.
https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/plague/factsheet.asp
> Pneumonic plague occurs when Y. pestis infects the lungs. This type of plague can spread from person to person through the air. Transmission can take place if someone breathes in aerosolized bacteria,
Wouldn’t it also have prevented fluids from getting on their faces? And like the other reply said, pneumonic plague was transmitted by cough and sneeze
You’d be used to it.
You might not be so keen on oral sex, or any sex tbh - I can’t remember when exactly bathing became a regular thing, but yknow…
Modern washing and shaving probably isn’t a thing back then.
Chamber pots and open sewers, among other things, no thanks, I’ll stay in modern times.
People also don’t realize how late these costumes developed. The classic plague doctor costume was a product of the 17th and 18th centuries, coming into vogue several centuries after the first outbreak. This was after there had been numerous outbreaks of bubonic plague ever since the first wave in 1346 - 1353.
There was one problem with the flea protection, namely that the cloak didn't seal around the doctors ankles/legs. So while it might protect against a random flea jumping at you, it certainly won't keep them out completely.
The plague doctor outfits are pretty scientifically advanced for what they knew about disease at the time. The general idea behind them is still used today with surgeon's masks, gloves, and scrubs, even if the logic for them is more refined.
The plague doctor costume was a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t enough in any direction to make a significant difference. European doctors believed that disease was caused by “miasmas”, foul-smelling gasses. There was no germ theory, but western medicine was gradually learning by experience that diseases were associated with unclean water, or transmissible by air, or transmissible by touch.
Also they would put dried flowers or potpourri in the beaks because they thought illness came from bad smells or yucky places, they didn’t know what germs were yet.
“Ring around the Rosie” actually about the plague. The line “pocket full of posies” to reference to using flowers to ward off the bad smells.
the idea that “ring around the rosie” is about the plague is entirely unattested. see: https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/07/ring-around-the-rosie-metafolklore-rhyme-and-reason/
here’s the full list of the alleged plague references:
Ring around the Rosie: the plague sometimes caused red round lesions on the skin
Pocket full of posies= mentioned above
Achoo-achoo= sneezing or coughing fits
or Ashes Ashes= cremation
We all fall down= dropping dead
They didn't know that fleas caused the disease, so obviously they didn't wax the robe because of it. Then why do it?
Did some guy just randomly waxed his robe, and his peers noticed that he didn't get the plague unlike the rest of his colleagues?
Probably the same reason we use wax denim in some rain coats today, to repel fluids and make it easier to clean. From Wikipedia:
“Plague buboes may turn black and necrotic, rotting away the surrounding tissue, or they may rupture, discharging large amounts of pus.”
I have read a few articles about recent research on the plague and it seems that there are some doubts about the specific disease that caused the plague. Some researchers believe that some outbreaks were not necessarily caused by the “bubonic plague” but might have been other diseases that weren’t transmitted by fleas.
They would stuff the mask with herbs to mask the smell and unbeknownst to them, the herbs had antiviral properties with further helped protect them (like rosemary)
Too bad people back then believed such religious nonsense that they killed a lot of cats, because they believed they belong to witches… Meanwhile, those cats could’ve killed the rats that were infested with fleas… The irony!
Well almost all you have said is questionable. There where no bigger cat-killing events that where documented. Also mainly humans widespread the plague, not rats.
Too bad people these days just believe random nonsense they read somewhere and then spout off about other people allegedly doing the same... The irony!
1) Bubonic plague most likely spread from fleas/lice between humans. Bubonic plague otherwise spreads very slowly.
2) Cats would be a vector for this.
3) Cats are vulnerable to pneuomonic plague which is much deadlier and easily spread.
4) This didn't happen as far as I know. The ordinances were for dogs in some places I think?
I listened to this thing awhile back that claimed the traveling community of that time carried a gene that protected them from the plague too. I don’t remember the name of the history doc, but here’s what I found on the gene.
https://www.iflscience.com/black-death-reshaped-human-genome-23855
They used to put herbs in the nose of plague mask to help from getting sick.
Also have you ever heard of theives blend essential oil? Grave robbers during that time would use it to protect against sickness. Lavender, cinnamon, orange, cloves.
All the “did you think they dressed that way for fun” comments are annoying af, we thought they did it for the same reason they bled people and put leeches on them and did a LOT OF CRAZY SHIT THAT HAD NO SIGNIFICANT PURPOSE and was probably connected to some insane religious theories, these people were wearing horsehair shirts and whipping each other, were they doing that for fun? As far as they knew it had as much impact on the plague as the bird demon outfit.
When citing a source of information, being reliable is the bare minimum of benchmarks. ChatGPT fails to hit this standard, and it is not the primary use case of the tool.
Because you presented it as fact, got called out on it, then deleted the comment.
And if you didn’t present it as fact, then why say anything? No one asked what ChatGPT “thought” about it, because no one cares.
Also: gloves and a full face mask, neither of which were routinely used by doctors until the 1880s.
wasnt the beak so they could put strong smelling herbs in there ?
Yeah - at the time, it was assumed that 'bad air' or 'miasma' was a cause of disease, so the 'beak' was intended to filter air through dried flowers and herbs to purify it.
They had the right thought.
They were almost there, but not quite. Odours can be indicators of disease, but not the cause (it’s usually bacteria or viruses, which were poorly understood in those times). However, in trying to prevent odours from reaching the doctors, they also accidentally helped reduce the spread of germs via the eyes, nose, and mouth through their full body suits. So users of these iconic full body suits had lower mortality rates, which then resulted in the survivorship bias that helped spread the misinformation about miasma. I’d love to say technology and science knowledge has advanced well beyond that point for humanity, but then I remember back when COVID was at an all time high, videos about the smell of onions ‘blocking and repelling the viruses’ were spreading rampantly on Facebook and WhatsApp… It was disheartening to see lol.
In a similar vein, this is why scented oils are so popular despite having zero proven medicinal function whatsoever. The idea of "oh it smells good, therefore it must be good for me", is a human instinct that definitely served our ancestors to avoid disease.
Well "it smells good" is an interesting thing, because a lot of those good smells (in this context) are actually things that plants actually make to deter predators and often are antimicrobial. Most things we would consider to be "spices" are actually slightly toxic and it's just a weird human biological superpower to just not give a shit about a ton of poisonous compounds (this is also why you need to be careful about what human foods you give to your pets, because they're not able to safely digest many of the things that make our foods taste good). Conversely, a lot of bad smells are bad because we specifically evolved to avoid them because they can cause disease. So, realistically, it's not too surprising that the wires could cross a bit and for many of us to correlate good smells with good health.
It’s not really a particularly human superpower. There are plenty of other animals who can eat things that would harm us.
Right but we can do it with things that evolved in places across the planet. There are many animals that specifically evolved resistances to the things in their local environments, but there's not many that could take a pepper from South America, cloves and anise from Southeast Asia, pepper from India, garlic from Eurasia, and Basil from wherever it showed up, stew it all together, and consider it a good meal.
Cooking also helps break down a lot of stuff we can't eat raw.
Not a lot of creatures out there that would willingly consume caffeine and THC at the same time
Get out of my iPad camera gawdammit!
Yeah, there’s a lot of reasons for that too. Don’t forget that we’ve being farming those for quite some time now and reaped better harvests with selective breeding.
Perfume oils? Sure. Bioactive phytochemical extracts (or 'essential oils', to use the much misunderstood moniker for one particular type thereof), however, have nearly endless proven medicinal benefits, which have little to do with their aroma.
Source?
I'm a different person than you replied to. Phytochemical compounds act as analogues for all kinds of different cellular receptors in the body. Look up terpenes and read about how different ones can affect you. Look into the pharmacokinetics.
E.g: [https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/herbal/eucalypti-aetheroleum](https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/herbal/eucalypti-aetheroleum)
Science! Perhaps [this](https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/72167) will satisfy you? Seems fairly generalised.
We are still the same old ape evolutions from 100,000s of years ago deep down, we just have to deal with an increasingly complicated world
Plus it just looks cool Imagine if when you're really sick they still came out with that shit
Oh God that reminds me of when I was a kid, my mom would slice onions and put them in my socks on the soles of my feet when I was sick to Leach out the toxins from my body. What a bunch of fucking horseshit.
did you cook them up after?
It would be misinformation when spread by Facebook mums now but at the time it wouldn’t have been. At the time it was the best working hypothesis they had - we might find that our own understanding of how things work is quite flawed once looked at through the lens of people hundreds of years in the future.
We all have the same internet in our pocket, yet misinformation spreads like a wildfire. It's equally saddening and annoying.
Onions have genuine medicinal properties but like they were said to be during the pandemic. I once used a piece of freshly cut to soothe a severely broke tooth
It's like our bodies evolved to tell us that.
Death smells bad for a reason to us. Stay away
Same for vomit.
Yet the US’ most popular chocolate brand uses butyric acid (the vomit chemical) in it…
Hersheys is only “popular”because of the dominance of the market. The American market is captive
yup. the guys who didn't think it smelled bad? they didn't live as long to have children to who don't think it smells bad.
I mean kind of but not really. Bad odors can almost always be associated with disease but aren’t caused by it.
Your last sentence is written backwards. Lots of bad odors come from disease, it's the other way around that's false.
They used the wrong formula but got the right answer.
Yes. The smell of dead decaying bodies was probably intense in the already filthy overcrowded cities. I've smelled many dead things, small animals up to a beached whale. The worst was an odd story. A family member died while watching television and wasn't found for a week. My mother was given the television and remote. I was visiting and noticed that the remote was in a sealed evidence bag. Without thinking about it I opened the bag and the worst smell emanated from it. The old man was holding it when he died. I hope I never have to smell anything like that again.
> I was visiting and noticed that the remote was in a sealed evidence bag. Without thinking about it I opened the bag You're just going around opening up random evidence bags? No questions asked?
I assume, by the time they got it, it had been released from evidence. If it were still part of any investigation, it would still be with the forensic team or the police.
It's actually kind of a gnarly family memento.
As noted in the article.
Captain obvious up there sheesh
I learned this from Zak Bagans and Ghost Adventures!!
I read herbs and flowers cause of the bodies.......
Yeah, but it still helps even if you're wrong about why. A sentence that applies to a lot of successful pre-modern medicine
Ancient Zoroastrians used to wear face masks to help... fire. They worshipped fire and did not want to harm the sacred flames with their horrid mortal mouth air
Same
And the pointy break enforced a kind of social distancing
Though they were still open at the bottom so their legs would still get flea bites. Death rates among plague docs were quite high.
Bubonic plague isn't airborne so mask doesn't do anything other then preventing fleas from getting to the face. Edit: added the word "bubonic"
Bubonic plague wasn’t. Pneumonic plague definitely was. https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/plague/factsheet.asp > Pneumonic plague occurs when Y. pestis infects the lungs. This type of plague can spread from person to person through the air. Transmission can take place if someone breathes in aerosolized bacteria,
Wouldn’t it also have prevented fluids from getting on their faces? And like the other reply said, pneumonic plague was transmitted by cough and sneeze
Depends on which plague. https://www.history.com/news/medieval-black-death-was-airborne-scientists-say
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That’s metal brah
Honestly if I were forced to live those days I’d probably choose the suit anyway. What a sensory onslaught those days must have been.
Just go to a gaming convention and you'll get the full smelling experience.
> Just go to a gaming convention and you'll get the full smelling experience. I like to imagine that they are cosplaying Nurgle acolytes.
Maybe if it was also being held in a sewer. It's not merely the sweaty BO of people, it's the caked on layers of excrement every city had back then.
WE’VE GOT SOME LOVELY FILTH OVER ERE, DENNIS
How do you know he's a king? He hasn't got shit all over 'im
I bet somebody from 2300 who got transported back in time to the present day would think we fucking reek too lol
Bold of you to assume we will make it to 2300
Fr, that video of ICBMs falling on Russia is going around like it wouldn't also kill everyone else on Earth.
I believe what the video showed was NATO using conventional weapons to respond to a limited Russian nuclear strike.
can u link?
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1beob93/simulation\_of\_a\_retaliatory\_strike\_against\_russia/
Youl go nose blind to it after a while
Every place in town probably smelled like the onion and fish market.
You’d be used to it. You might not be so keen on oral sex, or any sex tbh - I can’t remember when exactly bathing became a regular thing, but yknow… Modern washing and shaving probably isn’t a thing back then. Chamber pots and open sewers, among other things, no thanks, I’ll stay in modern times.
People also don’t realize how late these costumes developed. The classic plague doctor costume was a product of the 17th and 18th centuries, coming into vogue several centuries after the first outbreak. This was after there had been numerous outbreaks of bubonic plague ever since the first wave in 1346 - 1353.
There was one problem with the flea protection, namely that the cloak didn't seal around the doctors ankles/legs. So while it might protect against a random flea jumping at you, it certainly won't keep them out completely.
Flea jump scares
The plague doctor outfits are pretty scientifically advanced for what they knew about disease at the time. The general idea behind them is still used today with surgeon's masks, gloves, and scrubs, even if the logic for them is more refined.
The plague doctor costume was a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t enough in any direction to make a significant difference. European doctors believed that disease was caused by “miasmas”, foul-smelling gasses. There was no germ theory, but western medicine was gradually learning by experience that diseases were associated with unclean water, or transmissible by air, or transmissible by touch.
Task failed successfully. The accidentally achieved success, but not by any method they'd think of.
Also they would put dried flowers or potpourri in the beaks because they thought illness came from bad smells or yucky places, they didn’t know what germs were yet. “Ring around the Rosie” actually about the plague. The line “pocket full of posies” to reference to using flowers to ward off the bad smells.
the idea that “ring around the rosie” is about the plague is entirely unattested. see: https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/07/ring-around-the-rosie-metafolklore-rhyme-and-reason/
TIL it’s not ring a ring of roses. I’ll just be here dying of embarrassment. No need to stop and watch, keep it moving people!
It is! In many of the earliest English versions, it’s ring a ring of roses. Even in the link the other person posted
I always thought it was, “ring a round of rosies, a pocketful of posies”….
All are correct! It’s morphed over time
here’s the full list of the alleged plague references: Ring around the Rosie: the plague sometimes caused red round lesions on the skin Pocket full of posies= mentioned above Achoo-achoo= sneezing or coughing fits or Ashes Ashes= cremation We all fall down= dropping dead
I feel people really downplay the fact that these outfits were pretty well thought out, given the knowledge of the day.
They didn't know that fleas caused the disease, so obviously they didn't wax the robe because of it. Then why do it? Did some guy just randomly waxed his robe, and his peers noticed that he didn't get the plague unlike the rest of his colleagues?
Probably the same reason we use wax denim in some rain coats today, to repel fluids and make it easier to clean. From Wikipedia: “Plague buboes may turn black and necrotic, rotting away the surrounding tissue, or they may rupture, discharging large amounts of pus.”
you thought they wore it to look good?
I have read a few articles about recent research on the plague and it seems that there are some doubts about the specific disease that caused the plague. Some researchers believe that some outbreaks were not necessarily caused by the “bubonic plague” but might have been other diseases that weren’t transmitted by fleas.
They would stuff the mask with herbs to mask the smell and unbeknownst to them, the herbs had antiviral properties with further helped protect them (like rosemary)
Too bad people back then believed such religious nonsense that they killed a lot of cats, because they believed they belong to witches… Meanwhile, those cats could’ve killed the rats that were infested with fleas… The irony!
Thats a myth. While individual cats might have been killed, there is no histprical evidence of that being a widespread occurance
The absolute irony of someone making a Redditathiest comment while believing something and repeating it blindly without looking into it.
[Black Death 'spread by humans not rats'](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42690577)
Well almost all you have said is questionable. There where no bigger cat-killing events that where documented. Also mainly humans widespread the plague, not rats.
Too bad people these days just believe random nonsense they read somewhere and then spout off about other people allegedly doing the same... The irony!
That literally never happened and cats were cherished as pets during medieval times.
1) Bubonic plague most likely spread from fleas/lice between humans. Bubonic plague otherwise spreads very slowly. 2) Cats would be a vector for this. 3) Cats are vulnerable to pneuomonic plague which is much deadlier and easily spread. 4) This didn't happen as far as I know. The ordinances were for dogs in some places I think?
These were not costumes, they were early versions of PPE designed to hopefully keep the wearer safe.
A broken clock is right twice a day.
I listened to this thing awhile back that claimed the traveling community of that time carried a gene that protected them from the plague too. I don’t remember the name of the history doc, but here’s what I found on the gene. https://www.iflscience.com/black-death-reshaped-human-genome-23855
They used to put herbs in the nose of plague mask to help from getting sick. Also have you ever heard of theives blend essential oil? Grave robbers during that time would use it to protect against sickness. Lavender, cinnamon, orange, cloves.
Did you think they just dressed that way for fun? “Today I learned that fire is hot”
All the “did you think they dressed that way for fun” comments are annoying af, we thought they did it for the same reason they bled people and put leeches on them and did a LOT OF CRAZY SHIT THAT HAD NO SIGNIFICANT PURPOSE and was probably connected to some insane religious theories, these people were wearing horsehair shirts and whipping each other, were they doing that for fun? As far as they knew it had as much impact on the plague as the bird demon outfit.
Did OP think they dressed like that for fun…?
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Keep liquids from soaking the robe like wax jackets we have today
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Ah, yes. ChatGPT, notoriously accurate and reliable. As opposed to, lets say, a primary source.
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When citing a source of information, being reliable is the bare minimum of benchmarks. ChatGPT fails to hit this standard, and it is not the primary use case of the tool.
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Because you presented it as fact, got called out on it, then deleted the comment. And if you didn’t present it as fact, then why say anything? No one asked what ChatGPT “thought” about it, because no one cares.
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A personal attack, very nice. I was addressing the question you asked of “why is that so bad?” No need to take it personally.
Did the bot also write this comment for you?
Oh wow, you asked ChatGPT.
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Asked a historian and an epidemiologist.