Clarke Johnson DDS, PhD

• Assistant Professor, Oral Biology and Oral Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Visiting Assistant Professor, Sociology and Anthropology, Indiana University Northwest

This drawing is adapted from a famous engraving in Eion fast Koslicher Spruch von der Pestilenz., World Health Organization, Geneva.

Plague buboes are quite painful, so surgeons in the time of the Black Death were often asked to open and drain them. Because they did so, plague mortality among surgeons was much higher than among physicians.