Do you need a plague doctor in your medieval lego village?Probably so!The Black death or the Blue sickness as the people called it back then, spread west from China, ultimately killing off perhaps half of the medieval population of Europe.And people knew it was coming!They would receive letters from people in infected areas to the south or east, or pilgrims would return from their trips reporting about the horrors of whole families dropping dead in a matter of hours, and even whole villages succumbing to the disease.Many of the existing doctors just ran away they were so afraid.Nobody knew what to do about it. They tried repenting, doing penance, flagellation, changing their lifestyles and eating habits, and even refusing spices since the spices came from the East, but still the plague came and killed.

Don’t just sit there and let your medieval town be decimated!Your minifigs can do better than just walking around carrying bunches of sweet smelling flowers to protect themselves.Save your minifigs!The town can hire a plague doctor!Just pick any minifig and give him the costume and just like that he’ll be qualified as a plague doctor!He doesn’t need any training. There wasn’t any!All he needs is a mask with a long beak, so he can fill it with scented material like rose hips and straw.That way he won’t breathe in any of that “bad air” emanating from decaying matter.He will also need a long coat made of goat’s leather and covered with wax, to protect his body to keep that “bad air” out.To top it all off, make sure you give him a wide rimmed physician’s hat, just so people will know he’s a doctor.

So when your minifigs start breaking out under their arms with large blue buboes filled with a vile smelling pus, don’t worry, just make a plague doctor, and he can lance it or put leaches on it!Then when the patient dies anyway, he can keep meticulous records, and even perform autopsies so everyone will know what his patients died from.Don’t let your village be the last one to have a plague doctor.And once the plague is over, just like the famous plague doctor, Nostradamus, your plague doctor may be able to write predictions that are so popular that people are still reading them hundreds of years from now.

Looking for a great Halloween costume this year?Put on a plague doctor costume!But be careful: after you say “trick or treat”, don’t let anyone trick you into trying to treat their ebola symptoms!Scary stuff!

Written by guest blogger R. A. Denny.  View her blog HERE