A cosplayer wearing the long, black nose of a plague doctor poses with a woman in a face mask for a ...More photo at the Middle East Film & Comic Con in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Thursday ...

During the 17th-century European plague, physicians wore beaked masks, leather gloves, and long coats in an attempt to fend off the disease. Their iconic and ominous look, as depicted in this 1656 ...

With their dark, heavy robes and beaked masks, the plague doctor will forever be associated with the bubonic plague, even though they first appeared in France and Italy in the 1600s, nearly 300 ...

The Plague Doctor’s eerie beak mask was designed to protect against “evil” smells thought to cause disease. But the truth behind this creepy costume will shock you! Discover the medically ...

The N95 mask is a descendent of a design developed in response to a horrific plague in 1910: “It’s apocalyptic. Unbelievable. It kills 100% of those infected, no one survives. And it kills ...

A 1619 outbreak of plague in France, rooted largely in Paris, led to the first medical mask. As the disease killed some 80 percent of those it afflicted, French doctor Charles De Lorme invented an ...

During the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Italy in the 1650s, it was believed that the doctors taking care of the sick would dawn these masks in addition to long garb and wide-brimmed leather hats.

It is the pandemic’s defining symbol, a visual stand-in for the coronavirus itself. In America, the medical mask used to be confined to hospital dramas and operating rooms, but now the bare face ...