Back in My Day, We Had Plague Doctors and That Was Rad as Fuck

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Written by: Megan Cox

Petronella Rolfe
the Ghost

Everyone seems to have an opinion on what doctors are doing nowadays, so I want to take this time to speak up for ghosts everywhere because I, an uneducated ghost, should be the one to critique the work of today’s medical community.

I’m just gonna say it: Plague Doctors were fucking rad. 

Like, I get it, your doctors are trying their best with this whole “coronavirus” thing (it’s no Bubonic Plague or anything, but I guess it’s still sort of a pandemic), but that’s no reason not to have some style, some panache, some fear of God. Plague Doctors were the absolute shit and I have the proof to back it up. Have you seen the Plague Doctors’ rad costumes? They were designed by fashionista, scientist, and genius Charles De Lorme. My man Charles knew that the cloak, goggles, and intensely frightening white beak would be as fashionable as it is sanitary. Louis Vitton wants what Charles De Lorme had. 

Have you ever smelled the beak of a Plague Doctor? Your doctors wear stupid little face masks that smell like cleaning supplies, but Plague Doctors’ beaks smell amazing. They may not be sterile, but they are filled with aromatic items like juniper berry, ambergris, campho, laudanum, myrrh, and storax. Chanel no. 5 who? Plague Doctors were goddamn aromatic, and aromatic is far better than sterile. 

Have your doctors even tried bloodletting by putting leeches and poisonous frogs on their patients? Because every ghost from the 1300’s knows it’s easier to fight a virus when you have significantly less blood in your body. People from the 1300s would give leeches a standing ovation if it didn’t make them blackout. Do your doctors even drink a delicate juice made of rose hips before performing surgery? Because that’s the only way to cleanse a body of malevolent spirits. There’s probably malevolent spirits all up in the bodies of your medical staff. Hate to break it to you, but they’re cursed now.

Your doctors use gloves. Our doctors used long canes so they could poke the illness out of their patients. I bet your doctors don’t even make their patients drink their own urine or rub their bodies with live snakes. Sure these things weren’t effective, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t rad. When your doctors did autopsies, they were probably, like, “trained” and not “just poking patients organs with long canes.” That’s just pompous and not rad behavior whatsoever.

Doctors of your day think they’re so fancy with their “medical school” and “sterilized surgical tools.” And yeah, I get it, I died of the bubonic plague. If we are measuring based on sheer competency, modern doctors beat Plague doctors 99,999 times out of 100,000. But even though your doctors are better, Plague Doctors were far more fashionable, mystical, and by far more rad.

Managing Editor

Beans Cox is a crystal carrying, palm/tarot reading, vegan hipster who is obviously from Portland, Oregon. Her favorite type of bean is pinto.

One Reply to “Back in My Day, We Had Plague Doctors and That Was Rad as Fuck”

  1. Anonymous says:

    I was already a fan of plague doctors before I read this but now I’m ready to go buy myself the full fit this was so good

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