The First HazMat Suit: The Plague Doctor

One of the creepiest things about the plague, at least to me, is the thought of "plague doctors" walking around looking like this. "Plague doctor" is the name for those whose job it was to visit the sick and confirm that they had the plague. These were volunteers, not "real" doctors; physicians would not treat plague sufferers because they had no way of curing them; indeed, they were often some of the first to flee (no pun intended). Can you imagine this person visiting you? Creepy.

If you did, indeed, have the plague, you were boarded up in your house. If you didn't have the plague but lived with someone that did, you were also boarded up in your house. And if you didn't have the plague, you often boarded yourself up in your house (or on your boat, as you see in Defoe, or in the woods, where many people fled) so you wouldn't have to come into contact with those that did. People didn't know how the plague was being spread, which is one of the reasons it spread so well. A few notes about the plague doctor's gear:

The coat was usually leather, or heavy fabric. It was usually waxed so that bodily fluids--blood, phlegm, the pus from burst buboes--would run off of it. The beak was stuffed with herbs and perfume to kill the smell of the abovementioned fluids, decaying flesh, human waste...you get the idea. The perfume was also meant to prevent infection (it was thought that the disease traveled in miasmas, or pockets of infected air, and that these could be overpowered by other odors). The walking stick was for touching/moving patients and for pointing out directions to people. Leather breeches were worn to protect the groin. Buboes were first manifest in the lymph nodes, the armpits and the groin in particular, so these were specifically guarded. The creepy uniform worked, but only to the extent that it kept fleas off. In truth, plague doctors probably did much to spread the plague since they carried the fleas with them.

Why did they do it? Money. Lots of it. And maybe to wear a cool mask.

Prompt:

For Tuesday, talk about the journalistic nature of Defoe's writing. What parts of the writing reveal an author who was used to doing research and who cared about attention to detail? How does minutiae affect the way the writing comes across, the impact of the story itself?