Plague doctors during the medieval Black Death are famous for wearing those terrifying bird-like masks filled with sweet-smelling herbs, but their actual medical treatments…

Plague doctors during the medieval Black Death are famous for wearing those terrifying bird-like masks filled with sweet-smelling herbs, but their actual medical treatments heavily relied on bizarre mystical amulets made from dried toads; desperate physicians believed that placing a desiccated, dried-up amphibian directly onto a bleeding bubonic plague sore would magically draw out the toxic poisons from the patient's body through some sympathetic natural magic, and when the toad inevitably swelled up from absorbing pus and blood, the doctor would confidently declare the magic was working, right up until both the patient and the doctor horrifically died from the highly contagious bacterial infection, showing that instead of washing their hands or inventing antibiotics, the brightest medical minds of the era firmly decided that strapping a dead swamp creature to an open wound was the absolute pinnacle of cutting-edge scientific healing!