A 1619 outbreak of plague in France, rooted largely in Paris, led to the first medical mask. As the disease killed some 80 percent of those it afflicted, French doctor Charles De Lorme invented an early prototype of a hazmat suit, including a cape, boots, hat, and a bizarre, bird-like mask. A cane helped doctors maintain social distance from their patients, and the mask's beak was stuffed with flowers, herbs, and ingredients such as viper flesh powder to purify the incoming "miasma," mysteriously corrupted air thought to cause disease. De Lorme gained fame as plague swept through Western Europe, and the outfit remained in use for more than a century. Medical professionals wore it during 1656 outbreaks in Italy, the 1665 London Plague, and the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720. Even then, masking was controversial, notes Winston Black, a medieval medicine and religion historian at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. "Our earliest evidence of plague masks al