Plague doctors, or at least images of plague doctors, are having a bit of a cultural moment again, roughly 300 years after their actual heyday. They’ve become popular motifs for stickers, pins, masks, ...

I first glimpsed a plague doctor years ago, in a framed etching on the wall of a Venetian gift shop. The image was macabre: a sinister, masked figure draped in a dark robe. The head was covered with a ...

Putting on a mask to protect oneself and others against disease is nothing new, nor is resistance to mask-wearing, but mask designs have changed considerably from their first iterations. A 1619 ...

If you happened to find yourself in 17th-century Naples, you were in for a rough time. The Plague of 1656 was in full swing and would claim an estimated 300,000 lives in Naples alone. If you were one ...

What kind of face mask have you been using? Join the conversation below. The crow-like plague-doctor mask of 17th- and 18th-century Europe is one of the earliest and creepiest protective coverings.

When he first put on the Toucan, Thomas Finney felt transformed. He saw the bright orange, green, blue, and red leather beak hanging from his face, and he was no longer himself—and, more importantly, ...

Mark Honigsbaum, a medical historian and author of books like "The Pandemic Century," knows from face masks, going back to their first known medical use, during the Black Death – the bubonic plague of ...