The plague doctor costume looks like a cross between a steampunk crow and the Grim Reaper, and has come to represent both the terrors of the Black Death and the foreignness of medieval medicine.

It’s not as a doctor plying noble trade that has given the costume its staying power. Plague equaled death, and when you have black garbed doctors roaming around with giant protruding mask noses ...

The menacing oddball — who sports a black cloak, hat and beak-like mask — has been spotted several times in recent weeks, with observers calling the costume downright spooky, according to the ...

The Plague Doctor's costume was designed to protect you from what was thought of as "evil" smells or bad air which was seen as the cause of infection at the time. This is now known as the ...

plague doctors didn’t have a particular costume. Around 1619, however, a court physician to Louis XII of France (and later the more famous Louis XIV) named Charles de Lorme proposed a costume to ...

the look was so iconic in Italy that the "plague doctor" became a staple of Italian commedia dell’arte and carnival celebrations—and is still a popular costume today. (Memories of the plague ...

So, if you see someone wearing a plague doctor costume this Halloween and their history isn’t quite up to snuff, make sure they share their candy with you first, before gently correcting them ...

While it is widely debated among historians if this costume was in fact used frequently by plague doctors, according to historian Winston Black it is doubtful that de Lorme was the inventor of ...