The Plague Doctor Who Gave the World the Face Mask

Sent to a plague nobody understood, the 31-year-old, Penang-born, Cambridge-trained doctor Wu Lien-teh found the plague bacillus in a secret post-mortem and argued it was spreading through the air; a one-cent mask of gauze and cotton wool, quarantine in railway carriages and the cremation of the dead helped to end the Manchurian epidemic, while a French doctor who examined patients unmasked was dead within a week. Read the story first, or test yourself straight away.