The plague doctor's beaked costume was invented by Charles de Lorme, physician to three French kings, to keep out bad air

historyWellcome Collection1619 · Paris, France

The plague doctor's beaked costume was invented by Charles de Lorme, physician to three French kings, to keep out bad air

the gist

Charles de Lorme, a French physician who served three kings, invented the head-to-toe leather "plague prevention costume" after the 1619 Paris epidemic, so doctors could tend the sick without contact with the air they believed carried disease. The long beaked mask was stuffed with aromatic herbs and spices, which were meant to purify the air before it was breathed. The costume spread across Europe and was worn in later epidemics, including the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720. De Lorme was also a controversial medic who promoted antimony as a cure for intestinal illness and a "red beverage" he claimed could purify blood, and rival Paris physicians attacked him for it.

so what

The costume reflects the miasma theory, the belief that disease spread through bad air, which dominated medicine until germ theory took hold in the 19th century. Its distinctive silhouette became a lasting image of the plague and of early protective clothing. De Lorme's career shows how court fame and medical controversy could coexist in early modern Europe.

fun fact

The plague doctor costume's beak was filled with aromatic substances such as herbs and spices, which were believed to cleanse the air.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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