A repost from my friend Ignora Muse. She lost her password shortly after and probably may make an appearance here sometime in the future.
Ignora Muse
Sunday, 2 October 2011, 5:30 AM
Los Angeles
Just a note -- I saw MICROBES: Invisible Invaders, Amazing Allies in Los Angeles in 1997. It was a private exhibition (I guess the museum couldn't pull from its own collection, even though every museum has one of those collections) by
Evergreen Exhibits.
The very first cubical exhibit was "Dr. Medieval," a fabricated Parisian catacomb with aMedico Della Peste (plague doctor) wearing the beak mask/respirator (designed by Dr. Charles de Lorme in 1619) . The exhibit label copy quoted the infamous nursery rhyme:
"Ring around the Rosie,
A pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes
We all fall down."
Then describe the nursery rhyme's origin as a description of the plague. Unfortunately, it is probably not true. snopes.com gives an excellent explanation
here. Since this exhibit is relatively recent (within the last 25 years), there is no excuse for such lazy scholarship. This sort of deception is common in museums, i.e. presenting a romanticized unified view of history while failing to account for matters of scientific or historiographical dispute (and not providing alternative arguments).
