After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Day In The Life Of A Plague Doctor

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

If you think your job is bad, have you tried being a plague doctor in 17th century Venice?Join Anthony and Maddy as they wake up on a quarantine island and take you through a day in the life of a plague doctor, including the sights, smells and horrors of what you would have seen as you explored plague-riddled Venice in 1631.Find out what they would have worn, what they did on their lunch break, and what the perks of the job were!This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hello everyone, it's us, your hosts Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney. But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds of your time. If you're enjoying After Dark and we love you if you are, we would love you just a little bit more if you could vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards. So go to the show notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm. They will send you an email you need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30 seconds. If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't, stop what you are doing

right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. Now today, Anthony is going full method for us. Never doubt his commitment to the cause as we cast him as a plague doctor in 17th century Venice. It's just after dawn on Lazzaretto Vecchio, Venice's island of the plague-infected and the damned in the 17th century, the water laps gently at the crumbling stone key. It's quiet and calm, though this does not reflect the dangers to come. Our doctor – let's call him Lorenzo, though no one dares call him anything at all – rises from his cot in the physician's quarters,

a drafty little cell that smells like mould, rosemary and despair. He dons the infamous outfit, fresh from the streets of Paris. On goes his waxed canvas robe, still damp from yesterday's sweat and laden with the misery of the dead. Gloves, boots, and then the pièce de résistance, a leather mask shaped like a bird's beak stuffed with mint, lavender, and maybe a dash of wishful thinking. The beak was meant to keep death out, but it has now become the very face of it. Through the foggy glass eyeholes, the world looks smeared and distant. Honestly, that's probably for the best. With a grunt, Lorenzo boards a small boat bound for the main city, and creaks beneath him like it knows why he travels and really wishes he wouldn't go.

Ahead lies Venice, beautiful, rotting, gasping, already the death bells are tolling. He's not here to save anyone, not really. He's here to observe, record, and not get coughed on. Yet, in this masked figure gliding now through the morning mist, some do see hope. Others, more astute, see a harbinger of death. This is After Dark, and this is a day. I do love a trip to Venice. Have you been to Venice, Anthony? I haven't. How have I not been? But I haven't. I need to go. I know it's ridiculous. I feel like we should go for the carnival with the masks and everything. Too many people.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. I forgot about your hatred of human beings. Yes, my mistake. I want to know the background to the Venetian plague. I want to know what's happening in this part of the world, in this time period. Give me some context, please. If it's not too much trouble. I will. Listen, I've set some time aside for this, Maddie, so I might as well do it while I'm here. No, this is part of a wider Italian epidemic, actually, the Venetian Plague specifically. So we're talking 1630 to 1631 here, right? It's part of the Great Plague, 1629 to 1631. This is significantly impacting great parts of Northern Italy specifically.

It is introduced, as we've seen with other plagues that we've talked about or other pandemics that we've talked about, at this time it's introduced via trade routes. We've seen this before, haven't we? It's really because the world is opening up, it also allows for the spread of plague. The first cases appear in Venice around autumn 1630 and it spreads pretty rapidly because of the density of the population. And you know the way you were saying, let's go for the Carnivali. That's what I imagine when I imagine Venice. It's this dense population then and now. So I'm like, you know when you're supposed to go when it's not hot, so you're not getting all those smells like

it's a stinky city. Like, yeah, I would prefer to, I can't believe I'm not being anyway. Look, we are talking about a pretty significant death toll here as well. We're talking about 50,000 people in Venice alone, which is about a third of the city's population, not to mention everything else that's going on in northern Italy. That is the background to our Plague Doctor's day. It's not the best news, and it's going to become even more of a reality for him as he moves through the day. why are we waking up there? Where is Venice in relation to the island that we're on? What's the first things we do? And before we came on air, we were talking about not being morning people. Well, certainly I'm not a morning person. Even without the threat of plague, I can't be doing with the morning. I can't be getting up on time. I don't need anyone to talk to me. So I couldn't be getting up, putting on a plague mask and going to tend to people.

Just die quietly so I can eventually have a cup of tea. You're never late though, Maddie. You're not, you know, even if, even if you're not a morning person, you still function very well in the mornings. You've never been late for a recording session. So, you know, you can, you do it. I mean, I've managed to like function in society. Yes. But getting to that point is convincing yourself. You want to. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there's a few things going on there. So in this particular island, we are essentially in quarantine, right? And if you've got the plague, or if you're tending to people with the plague, then that's why you would find yourself there. Which, you know, makes sense. We understand this

idea of isolating and isolation now when it comes to disease control. You could, however, although Lorenzo doesn't, you could live in Venice itself. But if you do, you're kept in designated specific quarters near hospitals, say, or a magistrate's office where you can kind of be kept an eye on and you're separate from the general population so that you're not just weaving in and out, potentially spreading the disease. In Lorenzo's case, being on this little island, which he has to get a boat then into Venice, his movement is being restricted. You have to report into health magistrates. You can't live with your family or, you know, can't go to public events or whatever, not that there'll be money going on at this time anyway, because of the plague.

But it's a very limited life that you're leading. So it really is, you know, it's an ask to ask somebody to be a plague doctor in the 17th century. Okay, so the elephant in the room is of course the plague doctor outfit. Was Lorenzo to film a Get Ready With Me video, what would we see him putting on? So, and I am going to do a bit of something similar to this, because it is fascinating, I have been provided with a mask. What is interesting is that it's so limiting. It is a very, very limiting thing. You can't really see very much now. Look, I haven't got a historically accurate thing and we'll share all this. But the origins of the

outfit, I would have thought were actually Venetian, but they're not. They're French. Dr. Charles Delorme is the guy who's responsible for this. He was the chief physician to King Louis XIII, in France of course. He is credited with designing this outfit, or something very similar to it, in 1619, during a wave of plague outbreak there. It is thought to have emerged because Delorme wanted to create a barrier between the doctor and, in their view, the miasma, the air that is around them, this bad air believed to carry disease. And okay, we don't have germ theory going on here. It's not that scientifically advanced, but he's onto something, right? Like there's something

in this. Yes. And DeLorme probably ended up saving people's lives because of this invention, right? To a certain extent, I guess it offered some protection. Maybe it did help people. Why did it need to be so creepy looking? Yeah, isn't it weird? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or has it just taken on that? Like initially was just like, oh, there's a man dressed as a crow. And now because of its association with plague, we have this kind of intergenerational thing. I don't know, but it is certainly creepy. I think there's probably a level of that. But also like, it's inherently creepy. The

first time anyone put that outfit on, nobody was stood there going, that looks normal. Yeah, you look great babe. Yeah, like immediately, no. Okay. So what are the actual components of the outfit? Because we've obviously got, the beak is the most famous, but what are we looking at here? So it can vary, but let's talk about some of the staples. We have a long waxed overcoat, or sometimes it's just like a heavy leather canvas type. We have a long waxed overcoat or sometimes it's just like a heavy leather canvas type thing, like a cloak, I suppose. This is coated in wax or suet. And basically the design of this is meant to repel body fluids.

I mean, that makes sense, right? That is very sensible. Even today, that's like a kind of PPE equipment, obviously would not recommend replacing PPE equipment with a long wax overcoat. The cloak, yeah. Yeah, with a cloak, just your doctor with a cloak on the ward. But you know, I think that makes sense that is logical to us, right? Yeah, yeah, no, I think it does, right? It makes sense. There's there's something to it. And then of course, we have the iconic beaked mask. And this we all know this is stuffed with aromatic herbs, flowers, vinegar soaked sponges that we might

have some lavender in there, some mint, some cloves. Niamh I mean, it's overwhelming. Like individually, the elements of that are not that bad. Aromatic herbs, flowers, sure, fine. Combine them together in a small space. Not great. Angus This was supposed to filter and purify the air, of course. And this is the part where it becomes very disorienting because we have eyeglass pieces, right? And they are set into the mask. Obviously, they're meant to protect the eyes, but it's very disorienting. You don't have a full range of vision and it's, yeah, your world just becomes very enclosed. And the sound within that mask is also really fascinating because you can

hear yourself breathe as well. So it becomes very kind of intense. Yeah, you're very aware of like your own body, your own health, like your own vitality, like literally you can hear yourself breathing. And I suppose as well, like it's, if you're not the wearer, if you're near someone who is wearing it, it's disconcerting. And you know, people spoke about, you know, like babies being born during the pandemic who then struggled with human faces being covered by masks and later on how you teach a child that that actually wasn't normal and they're meant to learn to replicate adult facial expressions and that's how they communicate and how they learn from you. That wasn't available in the same way during the

pandemic. I wonder if there's something, if're, you know, if you're dying of plague, or you're just terrified and living in this environment, someone comes over to you. It's so sort of non-human, this beak with the eyes, you can't see the person very well, you can't tell their expressions, you can't, you probably can't hear them if they're speaking that well. Yeah, you can't. And that's one of the reasons why I'm not wearing it today, because you wouldn't be able to hear a bloody word I was saying. It's really muffled. Like it's really, really muffled. You're so right. Like it's a frightening thing. Yeah, definitely. Okay. So there's a hat as well.

Yeah. So this was just a traditional symbol of medical, of the medical profession in France, particularly where this look originates, right? And you know, you're talking about this kind of sense of who is this? What is this? Well, the hat symbolizes who it is in many ways. It's going, this is part of this profession. You're somewhat safe-ish. You're not as it turns out. But yeah, so it's just identify that you're part of the medical profession. This is often made of leather as well in order to help with the sanitization of it to whatever degree they had sanitization, of course. This next element though, is wild to me. This is a wooden cane that's used to examine patients from a distance. So, I mean, obviously, if you come across someone with a plague, you

probably don't want to get that close to them. But as a medical professional and someone who's providing care, you do need to get up close and personal with these sickly people. And this is kind of I mean, it's so dehumanizing. I just can't really get my head around this. You can imagine, can't you that the plague doctor wants to look at the buboes on your neck, for instance, but the blanket is covering them or whatever. So he gets his cane, and he flips back the bedsheet or opens your shirt or whatever it is because he is even with the gloves, he's trying not to make actual contact there. But then, you know, what else are they going to do? He's not going to really put himself

in the line of fire that much because you have to remember, as we said at the outset, they're not really trying to save people. Not really. It's more about kind of controlling it, if anything, and identifying where the disease is spreading. And that's certainly what we get once we get to Venice, you know? Yeah, I wonder as well if the cane is kind of, you know, a way of keeping people away from you, these desperate people who are searching for medical care and hope and need some kind of cure. And if it's sort of a way of pushing them away and keeping yourself safe as well, not just in terms of the disease, but physically safe. So this is the outfit, how it appears in France, but it does make its way to Venice

and is adopted there, right? GWEN SHAMBLIN It is because Venice has one of the earliest public health systems in Europe. It's called the magistrato alla Santia and it was formed in the late 15th century and it had expanded pretty significantly by this point because they'd had so many repeated plague waves in Venice itself. They knew about quarantine islands, they knew about health checkpoints, they had these state-employed plague doctors. They were concerned about identifying cases, keeping them isolated in order to stop spread. Again, it wasn't necessarily about curing, it was about stopping the spread.

Brinkley Yeah, and I suppose the thing to remember about Venice is that it is a port city and one that trades with the rest of Europe, but also with the Mediterranean heading out to the east. This is a hugely connected and important place. is a hugely connected and important place. You have all kinds of people from all places coming to it, bringing products, bringing news, all kinds of interactions are happening here. And so it makes sense that they would already understand about separating the islands, quarantining them, setting up these health checkpoints. You can imagine ships and smaller boats being stopped as they approach the city to try and regulate this. It makes total sense to me that Venice

itself compared to other places is already set up this. Yeah. It also feeds into this idea because of all of this movement of people. We do know that by 1630, 1631 plague outbreak, that these plague outfits have made their way to Venice and they've been adopted in the Venetian Republic. They become state commissioned outfits actually for plague doctors who are serving on quarantine islands, making the rounds, seeing infected districts. There are local variations and this is kind of camp, but we get like, you know, different herbs in the beak, for instance, or we have modifications to the robe. So they're making it fashion. But it's very much what has made its way from

France because of all of this human traffic. Yeah, love that. There's an image that I'm going to describe to you now. I know this is from the 1650s. So it's a little bit later than the plague we're talking about here. And it's also from Rome, not Venice. Of a character known as Dr. Beak of Rome obsessed with this and this is sort of black and white engraving obviously from the 17th century it is a fairly typical vision that you might have of the plague doctor we've got the beak we've got the eyeglasses we've got the broad-rimmed hat, we've got this cloak that is sort of sat over almost like a sort of tunic situation. We have some very fancy 17th century shoes at the bottom with beautiful bows. They're great. The shoes is literally all I'm looking at.

The shoes are popping off. Like they're great. Which you know, as you're dying on the floor of plague and the plague doctor approaches you, you want to see some great shoes. So why not? on the floor of plague and the plague doctor approaches you, you want to see some great shoes, so why not? He has a cane and is he pointing at something or is this attached to the end of the cane? There is a tiny, tiny hourglass with wings beneath it. I suppose it's a memento mori to remind people that time is running out. Not something you necessarily want to be reminded of that overtly when you are being approached by the plague doctor. But this is a kind of typical image. And the other thing about him, and we've seen this before in images of plague doctors that we've discussed previously on the show, he has on his hands very long claw-like nails. And there

is something kind of anthropomorphic about him, right? Like he's sort of, he's not quite human. He's very uncanny because of that removal. I mean, we can see he's standing sort of in profile and you can see one of his eyes looking out at us. But other than that, there's not really a hint of a human being. Well, I suppose the shoes are great, but like you don't get a sense of the man beneath this at all. It's very off putting and a little bit disconcerting. And then the background of this image, we have another plague doctor who looks like he's chasing a group of children. He does.

They're sort of running away in fear. I suppose it's the thing. These are terrifying individuals who are, yes, maybe going to help you, but also, as you've mentioned earlier in this episode, they are kind of a harbinger of death. Like their presence in any city or town like kind of tells you things aren't going great. And in the background, the far background of this image, we do see a small town that is presumably being wrecked by plague. I mean, it's funny you mentioned that eye because his eye in this image, because that's what I spent about two minutes just staring at yesterday. I was like, there is a person in there. Like it's so easy to forget. Like you were saying that there is a person involved in any of

this and it's quite monstrous, which leads you to ask the question then, why would anybody want to become a plague doctor? Right? Like this doesn't seem like a very desirable gig. And for many people it's not because what we see is that it's young and inexperienced medical graduates who are coming into the profession. You might see some foreign doctors that are hired from outside the city, for instance. Surgeons, apothecaries are doing this rather than licensed physicians or Medici, as they were known. Not to be confused with the Medici family. The Medici's, yeah. And so we get some second rate practitioners who are unable to find other

work. We get state employed civil servants as well becoming plague doctors. Again, don't think of doctors. I know we keep saying this, but I think it's important to remember, don't necessarily think of doctors as healing in this context. This isn't your local GP. No, no, no. They're hired by the Venetian government in this case. The city viewed this public health service as a civic responsibility. They were contractually bound to the public health magistrates. Many doctors accepted these positions to advance their careers within the formation of the local government. You get to know

these people, if you survive it, then who knows what might happen next. Or as I said, because they have no better options available to them. And they have contracts as well, which just feels so civilized in what is a very uncivilized thing. But these contracts contain clauses like the doctor shall not leave the island without permission. The doctor shall not treat private citizens for money. So you're very much in the public's pocket for this and you're paid by the state. So it makes total sense. And you get a bonus if you survive. And the longer you serve, the more bonuses you get. So there you go. I'll have to keep my voice down because right now I'm between the actual bedsheets of some of history's most famous figures. Want to know more about what Hitler might have been like in the sack? Or Julius Caesar? Or our very own Billy Shakespeare? You wouldn't believe the details

I'm able to uncover here on Betwixt the Sheets, a podcast by History Hit. Because sexuality explored through a historical lens can reveal a surprising amount about the human experience. What's in all, if you'll excuse the pun. And we don't just stop at sex. Expect outrageous scandals throughout the centuries, as well as probing into everyday issues, the nitty-gritty of human life that really connects us to all people throughout history. Join me, Kate Lister, every Tuesday and Friday on Betwixt the Sheets to find out more. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Right, time to slide out of here and avoid the bedpan.

You've given us a lot of context to sit with there, but for now, in terms of the day in the life, we are still on this island, this plague island, and we need to get to the city of Venice proper. So let's set off. Tell me what happens next in the day in the life of this particular plague doctor. So you're in your old boat and then you get to the Canaret Gille, which is a dense working class district that he's heading to first. This is pretty badly hit by plague. Obviously I talked about the dense population. This is why it's spreading very quickly. The streets you will find are mostly deserted. If you look to the doors that are around you, you'll see either red

Xs or white crosses. And these have been painted to denote the infected houses. So this is a very stereotypical plague image. Some also have candles in the windows, but others you will notice the shutters are nailed shut. In London, this happened as well in the 17th century. And a lot of families would barricade themselves inside once they realized they were ill. so in an attempt to not spread it, but also if your neighbours suspected you of having the plague, they might nail you into your own house and block up your doorway and then paint the red X or the white cross on the door. And so you get a lot of families actually and individuals who are trapped in their own homes and who either die lonely of plague or who

actually starve to death because they actually aren't ill, but they simply cannot exit their own property. You can imagine the atmosphere in this Venetian densely populated area, the nerves that must have been going on here. I think that's exactly right. Nerves, tension, and as a result, you have this need sometimes, not always, but for there either to be guards or health officials with the plague doctor, because this might be somebody who can come under attack if you're going into that kind of local area. Because look, the locals are terrified. They do not want to see this person because does he carry death with him? Is he a harbinger of death? I will say this,

this occurred to me yesterday when I was looking at these notes. Can you imagine, we always, fair or unfair, we always make this comparison when we're talking about plague between what we experience because it's the closest thing we have when we were all experiencing COVID-19 restrictions. But can you imagine the stakes going up if we had to mark doors of people that we suspected of having plague or that did have plague. Can you imagine what that would have been like going through those streets going, there's a red X on that door? Because the tension would just ramp up so significantly if that started to happen, I think. Yeah, I agree. And you think about the lockdowns in COVID and people kind of grassing on their neighbors for

going for two walks a day instead of one. And the kind of local surveillance that people conducted on each other in this moment of great panic and tension and fear. And yes, this idea of marking people out as having the plague and the fear of being marked out incorrectly would have been incredibly strong. And then you have the plague doctor And the fear of being marked out incorrectly would have been incredibly strong. And then you have the plague doctor themselves walking into the space and they're dressed as death, let's be honest, like literally a black crow. They have a very strong smell about them because of all the things that are in the beak. They're probably moving in a slightly uncanny way because of the costume that they're wearing. And also just the fact, let's just remember that you've got these eyeglasses, but they're more to the side of this beak. They're

not sat where your eyes naturally sit. So presumably in order for them to see, they're having to turn their head almost like a crow, it's kind of bird-like, right? You know, strange movement as they go and they've got maybe guards with them and they're being protected. And it's palpable. This fear is completely palpable. So you make it through the streets and you go into one of these houses that is marked with a red X. What are you finding inside of it? What are the symptoms the sufferers are exhibiting? And what can you actually do for them at this point? Well, we've seen this before, haven't we? These kind of buboes, the swollen black or

purple nymph nodes. We've seen, you'd find them in the armpits, in the groin, in the neck. These are painful. People find them like about the size of an egg. So they're not, they're substantial things to be suddenly appearing on your body. You have of course, this horrendous fever, this intense, rapid onset fever and patients therefore often become delirious or even become unconscious within hours. Dark spots or gangrene, black patches from internal bleeding that you don't even know that that's happening. And that's why it becomes known as the black death because of these black spots. I see. Do you know, I don't think it ever actually made that connection.

Yeah. And it's just, isn't it kind of, these people wouldn't have known that these black spots were internal bleeding. Like they just wouldn't have had the medical knowledge or insight to know that at the time. Well, certainly not the lay person. Coughing and vomiting, we've talked about you don't ever cough in a period drama without dying in the next episode or whatever it is. They're very much dying in the next episode because they're coughing and vomiting blood. And then of course, I mean, it goes without saying, doesn't it? But like extreme fatigue, chills, confusion, the body is in rapid decline. So many people will die from these symptoms. So it's, you know, it's end of life stuff.

Yes. And it's amazing, as you say, the kind of rapidity with which you can be walking around one moment and you can be dead pretty much the next. So our doctor finds these symptoms, what is he doing to try and cure them? Are there any treatments that have any effect at this point? Or is it simply a case of standing over someone and watching them die? A little from column A and a little from column B. You could lance the buboes with a hot knife. So they could open the swollen and floats to drain the poisonous humours. But of course, that's actually not doing anything. You know what I mean? Like what we know now. And probably just introducing more infection into the body.

Absolutely. Well, yes, when you think about it, you know, we've done the strange cures, haven't we? So they could be putting dead animals, pigeon carcasses on the buboes. Remember we talked about the chicken arse as well. So you're putting these things on there, as you say, possibly making things worse. Not that they're probably going to survive for 24 hours even at that point anyway. So, you know, they're on the way out, but it doesn't sound like cutting the buboes is doing anything. They may then try bloodletting. They try that for everything, don't they? It's just like, do you know what? We'll just get rid of a shitload of your blood and just see how that fares. You just need less blood.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the answer to everything. Put on a bit of an out vinegar compress. So we're trying to balance the humours, Maddie. Obviously, you know, we've all heard of this, but you know, this is very, very often making people even worse, as you say. Tell me then about the unicorn horn. What is this, please? Yeah, we, do you know what, did we put this in our strange cures episode? I think we, it had been on the brief and then we were like, oh, people are going to be weird. There are no such things as unicorns, but they did call it unicorn horn. but actually what it is, it's probably, we think, a narwhal tusk. Certainly we found remnants of that. And we, not me, I haven't, but other historians have, and archaeologists. And they were, we think, imported from the Arctic by way of Northern Europe and trade routes again. So this is

again bringing back this idea of trade and open roots. But it was thought that this was, you know, this kind of miraculous cure. It wasn't. But really, we are talking about the administration of the dead, right? For a plague doctor, we said he's probably not going to be curing many of these people. So he's then also giving some sort of spiritual instruction, documenting the deaths for the city records, keeping notes of how the symptoms progress, where the outbreaks are. And he's enforcing along with potentially the guards that are with him, the quarantine. So that's, I think, more of the key role that he's performing here rather than, again, trying to cure anybody. So in lots of ways it is actually administrative.

I think so. Okay. So we spent the morning walking the streets, looking for plague houses that are marked out. We've seen some people who've drained their blood. We've administered a unicorn, horned them, et cetera, et cetera. Presumably it's a very busy time. You're going to have to skip lunch. What are you doing in your lunch break? You get your press. No jokes. It's time for you now to certify some deaths. So you need to instruct family members as well, whether or not they need to seal or isolate themselves if a member of their family has died. You have to order infected bedding, furniture, clothing to be burned in the streets. Thanks very much. Or they might actually be taken

as well. They might be taken to the island to be disinfected. I mean, that's so interesting because that's, you've been given such a amount of authority taken as well, they might be taken to the island to be disinfected. in a period when the material culture of your home is your wealth, it's how you present yourself to the world, but it's also how you invest your money and keep your money safe, that you're ordering these things to be destroyed sometimes before people's eyes or to be taken away from them and destroyed elsewhere. It's so interesting to me that this is a society that allows the plague doctor that authority. And you're not going to be popular, right? If you are taking all of that from these people, you are no wonder you're living in isolation slightly.

Nobody wants to bloody see you. Feifei Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. And there's already a fear of these people because they represent death or the coming of death and are a visual reminder of how serious things have got. But now also, they are causing you significant problems in other areas of your life. They're taking away your belongings and your freedom, all with the goal in mind of stopping the spread of disease, mind you. It's not necessarily a vicious act, but I imagine, as is the case across human nature, across history, that there were some people

working as plague doctors who maybe took advantage of this position to exert their own power. You can imagine people kind of manipulating families or enemies or people that they maybe wanted relationships with or access to. You can see that this is a recipe for some disaster. It's a lot of authority, actually, isn't it? And it goes into very many different ways, because, yeah, we've talked about access to bodies, we've talked about administrative functions, then you also have to fulfill kind of funerary functions, because you are overseeing the removal of corpses with plague workers, known as monati. And these are an underclass of grave digger in many ways. They're corpse handlers and yes, they're getting paid very well because of

the risk to their lives, but again, outcasts, they're pariahs themselves because of their proximity to death. So this is, you know, a grim undertaking on all accounts. I'd love to know what the life expectancy was of one of the monarchy, the gravediggers, in this period. I mean, surely we're talking days. You can't be handling people who've died of plague and not catch it, surely. Unless somebody has some incredible natural immunity that they've built up, but that's going to be one in however many thousands. So yeah, like ultimately you're heading for the grave, which is funny enough because that's how you might finish your day as a plague doctor, by overseeing mass burials and just bodies on top of bodies on top of bodies and being then

burned or being interred, whatever, but certainly not formally buried as you might kind of expect. And then hop on your boat and back to your plague island. So there's your beautiful day. I'll have to keep my voice down because right now I'm between the actual bedsheets of some of history's most famous figures. Want to know more about what Hitler might have been like in the sack, or Julius Caesar, or our very own Billy Shakespeare? You wouldn't believe the details I'm able to uncover here on Betwixt the Sheets, a podcast by History Hit. Because sexuality explored through a historical lens can reveal a surprising amount about the human experience. What's and all, if you'll excuse the pun. And we don't just stop at sex. Expect

outrageous scandals throughout the centuries, as well as probing into everyday issues, the nitty gritty of human life that really connects us to all people throughout history. Join me, Kate Lister, every Tuesday and Friday on Betwixt the Sheets to find out more. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Right, time to slide out here and avoid the bedpan. What does the evening look like then? What does the plague doctor do for relaxation? There's no Netflix and chill. So like, how do you wind down from this? Well, I mean, depending on where you're positioned, right, you'd need to kind of do your report. So you'd need to submit your daily reports. Okay, so there's a bit of homework then. Yeah. So we're not done yet. Like it's update your plague tallies essentially. Clean

your equipment. Yeah. Get some of that rosemary and sage going again, kill the disease. You would be eating alone, drinking alone. And I can imagine you might need a drink after this. Yeah, but that's, I mean, that's psychologically bleak after the day that you've had. Right, it really is. This is not something that you would aspire to. I mean, the money will have to have been worth it, you know, or the opportunities if you survive. Yeah. And then you go to bed and presumably dream of the horrors that you've seen all day, and that you're going to see all day tomorrow. Yeah. And I mean, there was reports that some people slept in clothes soaked in vinegar to stop that spread of disease or in sheets that were smoked cloth to kill the disease.

So it's, you know, it's all very unpleasant. Absolutely not to that. We talked about those contracts and the hope was that at some point, yes, you're either going to be dead or we won't need you to be a plague doctor anymore because the plague will have passed. And in this particular outbreak, 1630 to 1631, it does eventually begin to slow down. Isolation does work. Natural decline is happening and the public health enforcement that the plague doctors are part of have all played a really big part and it's, you know, relatively successfully handled given the 17th century context. And of course, then you get the kind of, we've talked about this before haven't we, but the religious response to this. It can't

just be a health issue. It has to then become a kind of a moral one too. Yeah, right. Like whenever the plague strikes Europe, in particular Christian Europe, there's a lot of like, you know, oh, it's a punishment from God, like we've done something wrong, or certain people in society have done something wrong. So we should probably ostracize them and punish them first. Now we know that Venice is a religious city and one that has, you know, a sort of complex relationship between church and state. So what are the responses from the church and the state in Venice? What's going on? They kind of go hand in hand, I suppose, in many ways. They help one another because the

church helps to kind of facilitate a celebration of sorts where we're going to build a church. So in, for instance, in 1631, the Basilica de Santa Maria de la Salute, St. Mary of Health, is being built because that's a monument to the city's survival. And that's, you know, made in conjunction with the government. You see plague imagery vote of art becoming part of Venetian identity around this time as well. But then we have this festival, as I said, so the Festa della Salute, which is established in 1631 and still observed on November 21st today. So the legacy of plague in Venice is literally etched into the bricks and mortar of the city. So it's, it wasn't just contained to that period in time. It's a real, it's a real

legacy for the city. Yeah. And I love how one of those legacies is masks, not necessarily the plague doctor masks, but you know, that that kind of covering of the face becomes part of the, as you say, the kind of the iconography,ography, the aesthetic of the city, obviously in a more playful and uplifting way. But yeah, that's really fascinating. Would you do it? Would you be a plague doctor thinking about how it's pretty stable income in a time when the economy's ground to a halt and people are stuck in their homes, et cetera, et cetera? You have the opportunity to help someone. If we're going to take at face value the motives for doing this, maybe considering that some people would have done this for power or manipulation or whatever. But is it something that you would have looked to do or would you be swimming out of the

Venice lagoon to a foreign shore immediately at the first whisper of plague outbreak. I would be intrigued, but only retrospectively. I think at the time I would have been like, none of that for me, please. Now, I mean, that is one of those historical moments that I am very intrigued by, the day to day actuality of that experience. If I could time travel, put it this way, if I was in the real time, maybe not. But if I could time travel and do it for 24 hours and hopefully survive and not bring back the plate, mind you, there's antibiotics now, so it'll be fine.

Yeah, you could just get some antibiotics when you got home. Yeah, well, there you go. This is ideal, actually. I've sorted it. Yes, but only in time travel, where I could be sure that I could come back and not die. Imagine moving through the world like that for even a very short amount of time, six, 12 months, whatever. It's a strange position to be put in and there's something very appealing about strangeness sometimes. But as you say, there's an awful lot of crap that can go on around it. I wonder what the fallout was for these people, whether there were repercussions from serving as plague doctors in their own society, in their own communities,

but also psychologically for the rest of their life? Is this a moment that stayed with them until their own deaths, many years later, potentially? Did this pass into family lore? Oh, your great-great-grandfather was a plague doctor. Is this something people were proud of, that they talked about? I have a lot of questions about this. But yeah, I think, like you say, with the safety of hindsight and that historical distance, it's certainly an intriguing set of very fancy shoes to step into if that print is to be believed. But I think it would be too terrifying if you were in that moment. I

think. Yeah. I mean- You just want to stay with your family. Surely you'd want to. I mean, maybe there's just better, more brave people out there than us, but- I doubt it. Well, we are exceptional. We are the bravest people I know.

Which is why we spend our time doing a podcast. And if you listener are still with us, thank you very much for listening. And if you have any suggestions of day in the lives that you would like to hear in history, it's something we're trying out a new format, let's say, get in touch at afterdark at historyhit.com. That's afterdark at historyhit.com. See you next time.