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Pandemics Come and Go But Medical Masks Are Eternal
An illustrated timeline shows how they have brought us together, not kept us apart, over the last 400 years.
Medical masks are unusual artifacts.
Throughout history and across the globe, most masks have served to disguise, cloak or alter identity, whether in the special circumstances of ritual and theater, the perpetuation of crimes or the veiling of women. Medical masks, by contrast, are meant not to hide but to protect. They maintain the wearer’s identity while encouraging solidarity rather than segregation.