Quacks who wore beaks
QUESTION What was the purpose of the sinister-looking medieval doctor’s plague mask?
MEDIEVAL doctors wore sinister-looking beaked masks due to the belief that noxious vapours, called miasmas, were the cause of fevers.
Malaria, which means bad air in Italian, was long believed to stem from fumes from the swampy lands where it was endemic. We now know it is a parasitic infection spread by mosquitoes.
From the Middle Ages, many measures taken against plague throughout Europe and the Middle East were designed to purify the air. People left windows open to let in cool air and shut them against warm air; they burned scented woods and incense to cleanse the air; and carried posies of scented flowers or pungent plants, such as onion or garlic.
Plague doctors wore 18 in-long, beaked masks, with two small vent holes. The beak was filled with strong-smelling herbs — such as ambergris, mint, balsam, myrrh, laudanum, rose petals, camphor and cloves — to protect them from miasma and the smell of rotting flesh.
In 1619, French doctor Charles de L’Ormein designed a protective outfit of a leather hat, hood, gown, trousers, gloves and boots coated with wax.
Plague doctors also carried a wooden cane, which they used to examine patients without having to touch them. Some patients who thought the Black Death was a punishment from God asked their doctor to whip them with the cane to atone for their sins.
Oliver Carrow, Morecambe, Lancs.
QUESTION Why was the French film-maker Jean Mamy executed in the Forties?
JEAN MAMY was born on July 8, 1902, in Chamberay, an Alpine town in south-east France. He moved to Paris, where, from 1920 to 1931, he was stage manager at Theatre de l’Atelier, owned by actor and theatre manager Charles Dullin.
In 1931, Mamy turned to films. His directorial debut was the film Baleydier (1932). He became involved in Freemasonry, becoming a Grand Master of Grand Orient de France, and was also an outspoken Communist.
He wrote for La Fleche, a newspaper owned by Gaston Bergery, a communist who changed allegiance and wrote the founding document of the collaborationist Vichy state established under Marshall Petain after France’s surrender in 1940.
Like Bergery, Mamy supported the Germans. He became editor-in-chief of L’Appel, the collaborationist newspaper, and wrote anti-Semitic editorials.
In 1943, he released his most famous film, Forces Occultes, a propaganda piece under the pseudonym Paul Riche.
It recounts the life of a young deputy who joins the Freemasons to relaunch his career. It is claimed that the Freemasons are conspiring with the Jews and AngloAmerican nations to encourage France into a war against Germany.
In the opening credits, the shadow of a spider with a masonic symbol on its back descends over a map of France.
Following France’s liberation, Mamy was arrested as a collaborationist in 1944. He was shot on March 29, 1949, at Fort Montrouge, near Paris.
Mary-Anne Fischer, London N16.
QUESTION How is the route of a marathon measured accurately?
I WAS interested to read how a marathon is still calculated using a Jones counter, a simple contraption fitted to the front wheel of a bicycle that clicks with each rotation.
Though not of marathon proportions, as teenagers in the Forties we faced a similar measuring problem. We were eager to participate in pigeon racing with our local village club. The problem was that a pigeon timing clock was necessary. We could not afford this sophisticated piece of machinery so it was agreed we could run back to a fellow competitor who owned one.
We were allowed five minutes to the mile on foot, or three minutes to the mile by bicycle.
The problem remained as to how to measure the distance between our back garden, where the pigeons had arrived, to the timing clock.
We decided I should cycle through the village alongside a fellow pigeon racing club member who just happened to be the village constable.
He tied a piece of coloured ribbon to one of the spokes of his bicycle front wheel and the two of us were then to count the number of times the ribbon went around.
Bicycle tyres were embossed with their diameter, so we could calculate the circumference and distance travelled.
However, it could never have been an accurate measurement as the village bobby had to pass the time of day to everyone we met, so, it was 35, 36, 37 — ‘Hello, officer’ — 42, 43 — ‘Good morning’ — 54, 55 and so on!
John Elsdon, Spalding, Lincs.
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