Editing Personal protective equipment (section)

==History==
[[File:Die Bienenzüchter (Bruegel).jpg|thumb|A 1568 painting depicting beekeepers in protective clothing, by [[Pieter Brueghel the Elder]].]]
Early PPE such as [[body armor]], boots and gloves focused on protecting the wearer's body from [[physical injury]]. The [[plague doctor]]s of sixteenth-century Europe also wore protective uniforms consisting of a full-length gown, helmet, glass eye coverings, gloves and boots (see [[Plague doctor costume]]) to prevent contagion when dealing with [[Plague (disease)|plague]] victims. These were made of thick material which was then covered in wax to make it [[water-resistant]]. A mask with a beak-like structure was filled with pleasant-smelling flowers, herbs and spices to prevent the spread of [[Miasma theory|miasma]], the [[prescientific]] belief of bad smells which spread disease through the air.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Funderburk |first1=Greg |last2=McGowan |first2=Dennis |last3=Stumph |first3=Charles |title=Weapons of Mass Destruction |date=2015 |publisher=LawTech Publishing Group |isbn=978-1-56325-283-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GpbZCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT138}}</ref> In more recent years, scientific personal protective equipment is generally believed to have begun with the [[cloth facemask]]s promoted by [[Wu Lien-teh]] in the 1910–11 [[Manchurian plague|Manchurian pneumonic plague]] outbreak, although some doctors and scientists of the time doubted the efficacy of facemasks in preventing the spread of that disease since they didn't believe it was transmitted through the air.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lynteris |first1=Christos |title=Plague Masks: The Visual Emergence of Anti-Epidemic Personal Protection Equipment |journal=Medical Anthropology |date=18 August 2018 |volume=37 |issue=6 |pages=442–457 |doi=10.1080/01459740.2017.1423072 |pmid=30427733 |issn=0145-9740|doi-access=free |hdl=10023/16472 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>