Collection of antique perfume bottles on wooden shelves, evoking the history of perfumery

Plague doctors typically filled the beak of their masks with a mix of strongly scented dried herbs, flowers, and spices, chosen for their intensity rather than any real antiseptic property, in the belief that powerful pleasant smells could counter the “bad air” thought to spread disease.

Common ingredients used in the masks

  • Dried roses and other strongly scented flowers
  • Lavender, prized for its intense, penetrating aroma
  • Camphor, used widely across medieval and early modern medicine
  • Mint and other aromatic herbs
  • Cloves and cinnamon, valued for their warm, spicy intensity
  • Myrrh and other resins, already associated with purification through religious use
  • Sometimes vinegar-soaked sponges alongside the dried botanicals

None of these ingredients actually protected against plague, which we now know spreads through bacteria carried by fleas rather than through smell, but the choice of materials makes sense within the miasma theory of disease covered in our related answer on why plague doctors wore beaked masks filled with herbs. It’s a genuinely fascinating snapshot of how perfume and medicine were once far more intertwined than they are today. Our history of perfume guide covers this period in full, and the complete guide to perfume has more historical context. None of it worked as intended, but the ingredients chosen tell us a lot about which aromatics were considered powerful and valuable at the time.