The plague was once the most feared disease in the world, capable of wiping out hundreds of millions of people in seemingly unstoppable global pandemics and afflicting its victims with painfully ...

The plague doctor costume looks like a cross between a steampunk crow and the Grim Reaper, and has come to represent both the terrors of the Black Death and the foreignness of medieval medicine.

(Today, you might recognize it from the “plague doctor” costumes worn during the Carnival of Venice, as it’s associated with Il Medico della Peste, the famous commedia dell’arte character.) ...

This is a 17th-century German or Austrian plague doctor mask, from the collection of the Deutches Historisches Museum. (Anagoria/GNU Free Documentation License) Since the onset of the pandemic ...

Cops in the English village of Hellesdon are hunting for an unidentified individual who’s been creeping out locals by lurking around town while dressed as a 17th-century plague doctor ...

I first glimpsed a plague doctor years ago, in a framed etching on the wall of a Venetian gift shop. The image was macabre: a sinister, masked figure draped in a dark robe. The head was covered ...

Baron von Budberg, the town’s aristocratic doctor, discovers an epidemic and a coverup. In this tale based on an actual Manchurian plague, much is still unknown about the transmission of the ...