A physician wearing a seventeenth century plague preventive costume. Watercolour, ca. 1910.

The costume worn by physicians attending plague patients is described by Jean Jacques Manget in his 'Traité de la peste', Geneva 1721: the gown was made of morocco leather, with underneath a skirt, breeches and boots, all of leather and fitting into one another. The long beak-like nose piece was fitted with aromatic substances and the eyeholes were covered with glass