One of my favourite historical phenomena is technology that’s based on a totally off-the-wall theory about how the world works, but ends up being sort of effective because it’s close enough. Like those old-timey plague doctor masks, whose enormous beaks are an enclosed breathing apparatus stuffed full of dried aromatic herbs on the theory that disease is communicated by the odour of decay – which is completely wrong, of course, but the masks ended up being reasonable effective at their purpose anyway because it turns out that sticking a big wad of dried plant matter in front of your airway is a pretty effective way to avoid inhaling aerosolised bodily fluids.
Oh, but the plague doctors KNEW that they had no idea how disease spread. They had lots of ideas, but didn’t know which ones were right, but you don’t fuck arrive with Black Death, so they just protected against ALL of them.
The “beak” full of herbs protected against miasma, the concept of disease being caused by “bad air”.
They also wore thick red lenses, said to keep away the evil eye.
In addition, the robes they wore were full body waxed leather, which is about as close as you can get to a dark ages hazmat suit, as it was water repellant. This was based on the idea that maybe it was the exchange of bodily fluids that did them in.
On top of all that, they only touched patients with a special cane, and quarantined themselves for a couple days or so between treating plague victims and treating anyone else.
I really appreciate how they knew they didn’t know, but didn’t have time to fuck around so they just did everything in the hopes that SOMETHING kept them from don’t right next to their patients.
But I get what you’re talking about. One of my favorite aspects if this is how silver is said to ward off so many evils and be a purifying metal, and it turns out that it’s actually a fantastic antibiotic and antimicrobial. They noticed that disease couldn’t spread across silver, and used current theories to explain it. The theories were full of shit, but the observations were just as good as or observations today, and we’re actually seriously looking at using more silver medically because bacteria haven’t figured out how to develop immunity to that yet, unlike most antibiotics and antimicrobials.
not to be a nerd but the university of manitoba is putting out a book next month which is an english translation of a recent french book on pre-christian inuit third-gender embodiment, reincarnation, and magic, and the author worked for thirty years with elders who not only fully remembered the pre-christian period and oral histories and folklore but also knew knud rasmussen, and this is so astoundingly up my alley im screaming
Plot Designing 