Plague doctors helped their suffering patients in a number of ways including blood letting and placing frogs or leeches onto buboes. Did that work? Nope. Other methods included smoking a pipe of tobacco, strong laxatives or bizarrely: covering the patient in mercury and putting them in the oven. Not the best idea, they were dying anyway and now they have a toxic contact poison in their veins and third degree burns. Hurrah for the plague doctor.

Not all of the plague doctors met death in their profession. Nostradamus, the man that “predicted” loads of stuff “correctly” was in the ranks, he eventually died from gout. Paracelsus, the founder of toxicology and the first man to mention the idea of the unconscious mind did a stint as a plague doctor too. He died of “natural causes” at the age of 47. Not a bad age for a man born in 1493.

So the plague doctors may have been ineffective on the whole, but their role was more than that of healer. They spoke to the dying about how to conduct themselves before death and were witnesses to their wills. They were the last link left between the contagious outcast and the afterlife. It was a dirty, dangerous job that forced them into a solitary life. It wouldn’t be my choice of career, but I’m glad someone did it.

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