Un bon mardi à tous !
Welcome to our Daily Dose of Positivity!
As they're becoming an essential part of our everyday lives, today, let's learn more about masks!
- First, a very French expression to express revealing the truth, stopping pretenses:
Bas les masques ! Take off the masks!
- Now for a challenge with this (quite long) but very interesting French article about the history of sanitary masks through the ages:
And as a bonus, here's not one, but three sentences from this article linked to our related French lessons:
Les masques de protection que vous avez certainement tous en poche à l'heure où vous lisez ces lignes, n'ont rien de bien nouveau.
The protective masks that you certainly all have in your pockets at the time you're reading these lines, are nothing very new.
Dans le bec de leur masque, les médecins de la peste plaçaient du thym, des clous de girofle, du camphre, des pétales de rose… avec pour idée d’éloigner les mauvaises odeurs (les “pestilences” !) qui, en étaient-ils persuadés, véhiculaient la maladie [...]
In the beak of their masks, plague doctors used to put thyme, cloves, camphor, rose petals... with the idea of warding off bad smells (the "pestilences" [re: like "peste"]!) which, they were convinced, carried the disease [...]
C'est grâce au médecin chinois Wu Lien Teh que les masques furent utilisés pour la première fois lors d'une pandémie de peste qui fit des ravages en Mandchourie, dans les années 1910-1911 (50 000 morts), quelques années avant la pandémie de grippe espagnole.
It's thanks to Chinese doctor Wu Lien Teh that masks were used for the first time during a plague pandemic which wreaked havoc through Manchuria, in the years 1910-1911 (50,000 deaths), a few years before the Spanish flu pandemic.
Have a caring Tuesday!
Prenez soin de vous et à demain !
Aurélie
