Men in Tights: Charles De Lorme (1584–1678) and the First Plague Costume

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.