Eat your Nose!!

Did you know…centuries ago in Europe (circa 1500’s) when doctors visited their patients they wore masks with enormous beaky noses!

The Plague Doctor mask was used by doctors during periods of plague. During that era doctors had a very limited understanding of microbes (germs) that caused diseases and understood that the plague was caused by malevolent “spirits”. They wanted to keep the spirits away by frightening them, which explains the terrifying appearance of the beaked mask and dark waxed canvas costume they wore.

To avoid contact with the afflicted, the mask’s eyeholes were covered with glass and any examinations conducted by the doctor were done with a hand held stick. So the doctor could breathe behind his mask, air - filtered by aromatic herbs hidden inside the nose - passed through two slits cut in the “beak”.

One snowy morning in Dunedin, a local teacher was demonstrating the Plague Doctor mask to her junior class. Earlier she had secretly stuffed the mask's nose with the traditional herbs and scented lavender flowers as well as a generous handful of gourmet jellybeans!

The teacher said, pulling jelly bean 'bogies' from a plague doctor’s NOSE was "one of the stranger things" she'd done in her teaching career… but the kids loved it!