PHOTOS: A visual history of personal protective equipment

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Protective clothing on display at the Welcome Museum worn by doctors treating patients during the Great Plague of 1665.

Hulton Archive, Getty Images

1912: A doctor wears protective clothing during an outbreak of plague in Manchuria.

US National Library of Medicine

To prevent influenza! Black and white poster. Visual image is a photograph of a Red Cross nurse with a gauze mask over her nose and mouth. Text next to the image provides tips to prevent influenza. Title above text. Publisher information at top of poster.

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An American policeman wearing a 'Flu Mask' to protect himself from the outbreak of Spanish flu following World War I.

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A patient wearing a flu mask during the flu epidemic which followed the First World War.

St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty Oct. 1918 Influenza epidemic.

National Archives

Masks for protection against influenza. Red Cross workers making anti-influenza masks for soldiers in camp. Boston, Massachusetts, 1919.

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Two men wearing and advocating the use of flu masks in Paris during the Spanish flu epidemic which followed World War I, March 1, 1919.

National Archives

Masks for protection against influenza. Nurses in Boston hospitals equipped to fight influenza, 1919.

National Archives

Masks for protection against influenza. New York City conductorettes wearing masks, Oct. 16 1918.

National Archives

Mask worn to check influenza spread. The admonition of the New York Health Board to wear masks to check the spread of influenza epidemic has been headed: "Better ridiculous than dead", is the view of one official. Oct. 1918.

National Archives

At the Red Cross Headquarters workers are busily engaged in turning out gauze masks to prevent Spanish Influenza Soldiers in many army camps are wearing them, March 3, 1918.

National Archives

Soldiers trying out gas masks in every possible way, March 1918, in San Diego California.

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Two women wearing flu masks during the flu epidemic which followed the First World War 1920.

Pedestrians in a London street wearing masks over their mouths in an effort to avoid catching flu on the advice of a London doctor who suggested that the influenza 'germs' are spread from the mouth by speaking and coughing. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

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Smog masks have become all the rage in London due to the life threatening levels of air pollution with result in severe smog or 'pea soupers', 1953.

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A nurse at work in the Army Blood Supply Department of the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1940.

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It is the patriotic duty of anyone with a cold or contagious illness to wear a gauze mask whilst using bomb shelters. Such precautions are necessary to prevent the spread of infection. A 'health mask' can be made simply, using butter muslin, for less than 1d, 1940.

Terry Fincher, Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

A group of City workers wearing masks against the heavy smog in London, on Nov. 17, 1953.

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Three air raid wardens wearing a new type of gas mask, designed for the elderly and those with chest complaints, during a mock gas attack in which tear gas was released in Esher High Street, on April 5th, 1941.

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A London policeman wearing a mask for protection against the thick fog which hit most of the country and turned to smog in the city.

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Three medical students wearing surgical gowns and masks observing an operation at Guy's Hospital in London., 1935

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A health inspector checks a list of dead bodies for identification in an unmarked quicklime grave after an earthquake in Agadir, Morocco in March 1960.

Evening Standard, Getty Images

Members of environmental pressure group Friends Of The Earth, dressed in gas masks and protective clothing, handing out anti-nuclear material at an entrance to Oxford Circus underground station, London on July 22, 1980.

Keystone, Getty Images

Young German singer, Vera Palm, wearing a climate mask, to protect her voice from influenza. on Feb. 8th, 1968.

Don MacKinnon, Getty Images

Staff at Royal Columbian Hospital demonstrate safety measures to protect against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and other germs April 22, 2003 in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. A bitter tasting solution is sprayed in the hood. If it can be tasted through the N95 mask, then the mask is leaking and is considered unsafe. SARS is a flu-like illness which has killed approximately 15 people in Canada, primarily in the Canadian province of Ontario. More than 2,200 have been infected around the world, mostly in Asia. Officials in China state that over 90 SARS-related deaths have taken place in the country and that approximately 2,158 cases have been reported.

Mladen Antonov, AFP via Getty Images

A woman in face masks talks on the phone beside a mannequin wearing a mask at a shopping mall in Bangkok on Jan. 29, 2020. - Thailand has detected 14 cases so far of the novel coronavirus, a virus similar to the SARS pathogen, an outbreak which began in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Joel Noel, AFP via Getty Images

Medical interns at the San Lazaro hospital in Manila, 23 April 2003 wear masks to guard against infection by SARS. The hospital is one of two where suspected victims of the disease are taken for treatment. Heath officials say that some 50 people who were in direct contact with a Filipina who recently died of suspected SARS, have been put under quarantine.

Dominque Faget FAGET,AFP via Getty Images

Health care workers, wearing protective suits, leave a high-risk area at the French NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres Elwa hospital on Aug. 30, 2014 in Monrovia. Liberia has been hardest-hit by the Ebola virus raging through west Africa, with 624 deaths and 1,082 cases since the start of the year.

Carlos Cruz, AFP via Getty Images

An ambulance is readied by technicians wearing biological hazard protective clothes to transport a Guinean patient suspected of having contracted Ebola, in Cascavel, state of Parana, Brazil, on Oct. 10, 2014. Brazilian health officials have quarantined a Guinean man feared to have Ebola after he checked in at a clinic with a fever following his arrival from Africa last month. The 47-year-old man was taken in an air force plane from the southern state of Parana to the National Infectious Disease Institute in Rio de Janeiro on Friday morning after arriving at a health center in the town of Cascavel with a fever the previous afternoon. The patient arrived in Brazil on Sept. 19.

Simon Maina , AFP via Getty Images

Kenyan medical workers from the Infection Prevention and Control unit wearing full protective equipment show on Oct. 28, 2014, how to handle an infected Ebola patient on a portable negative pressure bed at the Kenyatta national hospital in Nairobi. Measures have been put in place ahead of the arrival of the 12 Kenyans returning from Ebola-hit Liberia. Health officials battling the Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa have managed to limit its spread on the continent to five countries, with Kenya so far escaping the virus.