Plague doctors, or at least images of plague doctors, are having a bit of a cultural moment again, roughly 300 years after their actual heyday. They’ve become popular motifs for stickers, pins, masks, ...

I first glimpsed a plague doctor years ago, in a framed etching on the wall of a Venetian gift shop. The image was macabre: a sinister, masked figure draped in a dark robe. The head was covered with a ...

The plague was once the most feared disease in the world, capable of wiping out hundreds of millions of people in seemingly unstoppable global pandemics and afflicting its victims with painfully ...