{"title":"Men in Tights: Charles De Lorme (1584–1678) and the First Plague Costume","authors":"Herbert J. Mattie","doi":"10.1163/26667711-bja10033","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The concept of the plague doctor, as it comes down to us from history – wearing a mask, a long robe, hat and gloves, and carrying a cane – is compiled from at least three sources, each of them having their own intrinsic obliquity: the prints from 1656, the descriptions in Michel de Saint-Martin’s book about Charles de Lorme, and the print and description in Jean-Jacques Manget’s plague treatise from 1721. This article focuses on the description of the plague suit in Charles de Lorme’s biography by Saint-Martin. This biographer had a reputation for being eccentric and gullible, and there are assertions in his book that are demonstrably incorrect. Still, if Saint-Martin’s description is to be trusted, then de Lorme’s plague suit bore hardly any resemblance to the well-known images of the plague doctor, whose historicity is already very dubious. The habit of merging these contradictory data commenced in the context of retrospection when ppe gained renewed relevance around the turn of the twentieth century. Scholars and educators should be aware of this when they use depictions and descriptions of plague doctors in the context of the history of medicine.","PeriodicalId":72967,"journal":{"name":"European journal for the history of medicine and health","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European journal for the history of medicine and health","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667711-bja10033","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The concept of the plague doctor, as it comes down to us from history – wearing a mask, a long robe, hat and gloves, and carrying a cane – is compiled from at least three sources, each of them having their own intrinsic obliquity: the prints from 1656, the descriptions in Michel de Saint-Martin’s book about Charles de Lorme, and the print and description in Jean-Jacques Manget’s plague treatise from 1721. This article focuses on the description of the plague suit in Charles de Lorme’s biography by Saint-Martin. This biographer had a reputation for being eccentric and gullible, and there are assertions in his book that are demonstrably incorrect. Still, if Saint-Martin’s description is to be trusted, then de Lorme’s plague suit bore hardly any resemblance to the well-known images of the plague doctor, whose historicity is already very dubious. The habit of merging these contradictory data commenced in the context of retrospection when ppe gained renewed relevance around the turn of the twentieth century. Scholars and educators should be aware of this when they use depictions and descriptions of plague doctors in the context of the history of medicine.
历史上流传下来的鼠疫医生的概念--戴面具、穿长袍、戴帽子和手套、拿手杖--至少有三种来源,每种来源都有其固有的斜度:1656 年的印刷品、米歇尔-德-圣马丁(Michel de Saint-Martin)关于夏尔-德-洛尔姆(Charles de Lorme)的书中的描述,以及让-雅克-曼盖(Jean-Jacques Manget)1721 年的鼠疫论文中的印刷品和描述。本文的重点是圣马丁(Saint-Martin)在《夏尔-德-罗尔姆传》中对鼠疫服的描述。这位传记作者以古怪和易受骗而闻名,他书中的一些断言显然是不正确的。不过,如果圣马丁的描述可信的话,那么德-洛尔姆的鼠疫服与众所周知的鼠疫医生形象几乎没有任何相似之处,而后者的历史性已经非常可疑了。在 20 世纪之交鼠疫研究重新获得相关性的背景下,人们开始习惯于将这些相互矛盾的资料合并在一起进行回顾。学者和教育工作者在医学史中使用对鼠疫医生的描绘和描述时应注意这一点。