According to Tumblr, engagement with the “plague doctor” tag spiked 446 percent from January to March of this year. The plague-doctor look emerged on Tumblr in the middle of 2019, Vega said, but it blew up this year after the pandemic hit. Today’s plague doctors look similar, though their masks are sometimes filled with snacks such as M&Ms or popcorn. (They didn’t know about viruses.) In most images, they’re depicted wearing black robes and carrying sticks, which were used in part to keep the ill at least several feet away. They wore enormous, beak-like masks that were usually filled with herbs to prevent them from smelling the “ poisonous air” that caused disease. The plague doctors, the real ones, were amateur physicians who tried to help people suffering from the bubonic plague. She’s part of a Tumblr community in which people dress up like 17th-century plague doctors and post pictures and videos of themselves online.
Leeches were a common medical treatment 400 years ago, which is why Vega owns them now. “Which a lot of people don’t expect from a leech.” “They each have their own personalities,” Vega, a 22-year-old biology student, told me. They’re her friends! The leeches, named Chungus, Burrito, Wormitha, and Chocolate Chip, live in a fishbowl, but they’re curious about the world. Alexandra Vega calls her four pet leeches “the Squish Squad.” They eat once every six months yes, they drink blood and yes, she lets them feed on her body.
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