When the Black Death spread through Europe, doctors wore linen or canvas soaked in wax to prevent infection, black hats on their heads, and silver beaked masks that filtered the air. Their eyes were protected by clear glass, the beaks stuffed with herbs. They wore white gloves and carried wooden sticks to lift patients' blankets or clothing.
They always appeared wherever there was plague, and gradually people came to regard the beaked doctors as Death itself.
Yet few people knew what those terrifying beaked doctors looked like after taking off that outfit. The group of students Georgiana had seen in the cafeteria, who still looked like children, were their true faces. The first person to invent the beaked doctor's attire had been a doctor from France.
It was not that these boys had never seen women before. They were simply astonished that a girl had dared to come here.
Besides this school built amid graves, there was also a church nearby, with an isolation ward for lepers beside it. Leprosy had been widespread during the Middle Ages. Later, as more people died from the Black Death, the population declined, wool production increased, people's incomes rose, and woolen cloth became cheaper. Everyone could afford thicker fabrics to cover their bodies, and leprosy, which spread through contact, gradually disappeared from continental Europe. Scandinavia took its place as an endemic region. Once the lepers had been cleared out, mental patients filled this "hospital."
These places had once all been administered by the Church. The priest lived at Saint Vincent Church. Saint Martin was the patron saint of all wanderers, while Saint Vincent was the patron saint of charitable organizations. Naturally, isolation facilities had to be located somewhere cut off from the world. The Black Death of the fourteenth century had taught people a