Plague doctor

Copper engraving of a plague doctor of 17th-century Rome

A plague doctor was a physician who treated victims of bubonic plague[1] during epidemics in 17th-century Europe. These physicians were hired by cities to treat infected patients regardless of income, especially the poor, who could not afford to pay.[2][3]

Plague doctors had a mixed reputation, with some citizens seeing their presence as a warning to leave the area or that death was near.[4] Some plague doctors were said to charge patients and their families additional fees for special treatments or false cures.[5] In many cases, these doctors were not experienced or trained physicians or surgeons, instead being volunteers, second-rate doctors, or young doctors just starting a career.[6] Plague doctors rarely cured patients, instead serving to record death tolls and the number of infected people for demographic purposes.[4]

In France and the Netherlands, plague doctors often lacked medical training and were referred to as "empirics". Plague doctors were known as municipal or "community plague doctors", whereas "general practitioners" were separate doctors and both might be in the same European city or town at the same time.[1][7][8][9]

  1. ^ a b Cipolla 1977, p. 65.
  2. ^ Cipolla 1977, p. 68.
  3. ^ Andrew Whalen (2020-03-19). "Are surgical masks the new plague masks? A history of the not-always-helpful ways we've reacted to pandemics". Newsweek. Retrieved 2021-03-09.
  4. ^ a b Byrne 2006, p. 170.
  5. ^ Rosenhek, Jackie (October 2011). "Doctor of the Black Death". Doctor's Review. Archived from the original on 2014-05-06. Retrieved 2014-05-06.
  6. ^ Miskimin, Harry (1977). The Medieval City. Yale University Press. p. 66. ISBN 0-300-02081-3.
  7. ^ Ellis 2004, p. 202.
  8. ^ Byrne 2006, p. 169.
  9. ^ Simon, Matthew, Emergent Computation: emphasizing bioinformatics, Publisher シュプリンガー・ジャパン株式会社, 2005, p. 3. ISBN 0-387-22046-1