According to Michel Tibayrenc's book "Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases" (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), the first mention of the famous plague doctor costume is found in a mid-17th century work ...

Shocking, when medieval and Renaissance cities tried to hire doctors to do dangerous, depressing, highly stigmatized work ... to 1619, plague doctors didn’t have a particular costume.

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 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 ...

This is a watercolour of an early 17th-century plague doctor's costume. (Wellcome Trust/Creative Commons) The types of plague that were circulating in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the plague ...

But while the plague doctor has become an eerie symbol of pandemic death, there's much about the outlandish costume that's more practical than you might think. An engraving of Doctor Schnabel ...

While it is not an offence to dress in this way, we will be looking to speak to the individual to give advice on the appropriateness of the costume at this time.' Plague doctor costumes have ...

Police are trying to find a person who dresses as a 17th-century plague doctor on their walks during ... said she saw them wearing a “full black suit” on a sunny, 20C day.