Did You Stuff Your COVID Mask With Herbs?

A patient gave me the beautiful coffee-table book Medicine: A Treasury of Art and Literature, about the history of medicine.

One of the things it covered is contagion, which is something I’ve dealt with for a long time. The book had a section on protective clothing worn by the plague doctor from 1720.

There’s an illustration of doctor who is wearing a leather coat, pants, boots, a face shield and a hat. He’s carrying a wand, which was designed to give patients directions and move them around because you couldn’t always hear what the doctor was saying through the mask.

The long nose keeps you a little distant from people. But it was designed to be filled with herbs to stop the spread of infection.

So personal protective clothing isn’t new. It looks different today, but some principles remain.

Dr. Bill Valenti is reflected in his computer screen as he looks at image of an agricultural worker in modern personal protective equipment.

PPE is being used today by dairy workers because of what looks like a problem with avian flu not only affecting chickens but cows and dairy workers – transmission from cows infecting dairy workers.

The modern version of PPE has a hood, overalls that zip up, booties and gloves. There’s also a covering for the nose and mouth.

We can learn from the past because it really does tell the story.  We may not have herbs in our nose, but we certainly want to stop the spread of infection.