During the Bubonic Plague, doctors wore these bird-like masks to avoid becoming sick. They would fill the beaks with spices and rose petals, so they wouldn’t have to smell the rotting bodies.
A theory during the Bubonic Plague was that the plague was caused by evil spirits. To scare the spirits away, the masks were intentionally designed to be creepy.
I need a Venetian plague mask.
I’m so obsessed with these.
I like that the plague may have been caused by ghosts and instead of praying them away people decided to scare them off. Someone’s like “so there’s these demons what can we do?” And someone else goes “let’s scare them.” And everyone agrees that it’s a reasonable plan, to make things creepy enough to frighten invisible monsters. People were pretty badass back then.
so cool.
(via bambi00)
