[3] Contrary to popular belief, no evidence suggests that the beak mask costume was worn during the Black Death or the Middle Ages.
[4] The costume consists of a leather hat, mask with glass eyes and a beak, stick to remove clothes of a plague victim, gloves, waxed linen robe, and boots.
[2][13] Doctors used wooden canes in order to point out areas needing attention and to examine patients without touching them.
The garments were first mentioned by a physician to King Louis XIII of France, Charles de Lorme, who wrote in a 1619 plague outbreak in Paris that he developed an outfit made of Moroccan goat leather, including boots, breeches, a long coat, hat, and gloves[22][23] modeled after a soldier's canvas gown that went from the neck to the ankle.
De Lorme wrote that the mask had a "nose half a foot long, shaped like a beak, filled with perfume with only two holes, one on each side near the nostrils, but that can suffice to breathe and to carry along with the air one breathes the impression of the drugs enclosed further along in the beak.
"[27] Recent research has revealed that strong caveats must be applied with regard to De Lorme's assertions, however.
[31][32] In his work Tractatus de Peste,[33] published at Toulouse in May 1629,[34] Irish physician Niall Ó Glacáin references the protective clothing worn by plague doctors, which included leather coats, gauntlets and long beak-like masks filled with fumigants.