Towns hired these guys to treat all of their citizens and paid them rather handsomely. In some cases the plague doctors were paid as much as four times a normal doctor’s salary. They signed contracts saying that they would only help plague sufferers and that before and after there would be extended periods of quarantine where they had to stay away from everybody. For those that flaunted the rules and tried to fix other ailments along the way there would be fines.

Those contractual obligations meant that they would rarely speak to anyone that wasn’t afflicted with the plague and was soon to die. It must have been lonely, morbid, scary and a little bit boring.

Because the work was so dangerous, plague doctors were highly sought after. They had extra privileges within the cities they worked. For instance, they were allowed to conduct autopsies to look for potential causes of plague. This was at a time when dissecting cadavers was forbade. To be honest, that’s not much of a perk if your job is likely to kill you.

There were reports of a couple of plague doctors being sent from Barcelona to Tortosa being captured and ransomed. The city willingly paid the ransom, these chaps were highly prized.

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