Doctor Tot, Plague Doctor?

[Ilyena]

Okay, maybe not as he seems to be more of an academic than an actual doctor. At some point he does attempt to cure Cid and he "diagnoses" Garnet when she loses her voice. Anywho, I was listening to a podcast about the Black Death and at one point the host brought up plague doctors. I googled it and my first thought was "holy hell, that is terrifying!" My second thought was "omg, that kind of looks like Doctor Tot from FFIX!"

The plague doctor costume includes a mask with a long beak (that often held herbs such as lavender), glass covered eye openings and a wide-brimmed hat. They also wore long dark overcoats and carried canes. I would think anyone suffering from plague would pretty much think this was death coming to take them upon seeing them:

Seriously, look at that and tell me it's not creepy. One other thing to note is that medical training in the 14th and 15th centuries wasn't nearly what it is now so "doctor" is used loosely here. Many of these plague doctors lacked any sort of medical training at all. According to the Wikipedia article, "one man was a fruit seller before becoming a plague doctor." That's a guy you want diagnosing you. It was likely a job that no one really wanted and a good portion of it was just tallying deaths and not actually treating or curing anything. The nose on the mask was used to keep out the smells of decay and death as well as keep away "bad air."

Here is Doctor Tot's Concept Artwork and another image of a plague doctor:

The similarity is definitely there. Doctor Tot comes by his beak naturally but the overall costume down to the long coat, glasses and hat fit. I'm honestly not sure if Doctor Tot was supposed to be human; in FFIX it's hard to tell sometimes.

Thoughts? I just found this interesting and wanted to share.

 

[Dionysos]

This is a great theory!

I agree that FFIX is not at all clear with some of its character designs. I believe the artwork implies that he is human, but just an extreme caricature of a scholastic/bookish human. Therefore scruffy hair, scruffy facial hair (which hides any evidence of a mouth), glasses (which hide any evidence of eyes), and a nose that would win a 100m race from the starting blocks.

That said, taking a closer look just now at the artwork, I actually notice a clawed hand. Could he perhaps be a mole or something instead? Like a relative of the mysterious mole people mentioned at Mt. Gulug? If he is, he's kept that a secret... The mole people are one of Gaia's greatest unsolved mysteries.

But even if it is just an exaggerated nose, it definitely looks beak-ish. And I personally love your plague doctor inspiration idea.

Yeah, the miasma theory that bad air was the cause of illnesses is an old one that took some time to go. When people didn't understand how germs, viruses, bacteria, etc, spread (or that they even existed) they believed illnesses could be due to bad air. And at times that evil spirits could be within, or be the cause of, that bad air.

So an attitude of the day in general was to chuck herbs at everything as that would help freshen up that bad air.

So naturally, some genius noticed that you could pack a lot of herbs in a creepy beak and walk around looking like a humanoid carrion pecker from Hell in order to minimise the risk of inhaling that bad air yourself.

Doctor Tot is a legit scholar and a bit of a polymath. His interests include astronomy and history in addition to having some degree of knowledge of medicine as you describe.

Some people have speculated that he could be intended to be a loose representation of the Egyptian scribe god Thoth. One of Thoth's forms, if you like, was a man with a ibis head, and he was also associated with broad branches of knowledge (including astronomy and at times medicine).

However, I believe people who think that Doctor Tot actually is Thoth might be going by the apparent similarity of the name—but it isn't exact. I looked into it and トット (totto) is how it is rendered in the Japanese, I believe, and searching for this word in Google only brings up a Japanese comedy duo called Totto. The Egyptian god Thoth, however, is usually represented in Japanese with トート (tōto) as far as I can tell. Similar, but not the same. Though honestly we would need to ask somebody who is actually an expert in Japanese about that (like Ryan). I most certainly am not.

But the point is it is also—like your plague doctor idea—an interesting one that adds another layer to this fascinating character.

Overall, certain visual aspects of Doctor Tot's design do match the plague doctor vibes, but with a gargantuan dosage of friendly warmth.

 

[Belle T]

I think it's important to note that in many forms of fiction "doctor" often refers to anyone who is a jack of all trades in all manner of difficult professions. In the real world, people usually tend to specialize in one specific area of expertise, but in fiction, it's often presumed that if someone is intelligent in one area (literature, science, or wherever) that they're probably also the best person to seek help from in other areas. So that's how I always interpreted Dr. Tot's name.

Dr. Tot was almost certainly aesthetically inspired by plague doctors, as they are a very easy short-hand for fantasy-themed intellectuals. But I don't think that connects him to anything in terms of backstory and personality. I think he is more pertinently intended to resemble fantasy dwarves, who are well known for having a very... distinct nose. Here are just a few images that I could pull from Google to illustrate this.

So in short, FFIX uses stereotypical dwarf characteristics to draw aesthetic parallels to plague doctors as a shorthand for fantasy setting intellectualism. It's a very efficient--but pleasing--design that I think effectively communicates the character's personality and role in the story with only a glance.

 

[Ilyena]

Dr. Tot was almost certainly aesthetically inspired by plague doctors, as they are a very easy short-hand for fantasy-themed intellectuals. But I don't think that connects him to anything in terms of backstory and personality. I think he is more pertinently intended to resemble fantasy dwarves, who are well known for having a very... distinct nose. Here are just a few images that I could pull from Google to illustrate this.

Oh, for sure. I wasn't thinking in terms of backstory or personality. Moreso just the overall design. I can certainly see the inspiration taken from fantasy dwarves as well, especially considering his height and hairiness. Fantasy dwarves are also notoriously hairy.

This is a great theory!

I agree that FFIX is not at all clear with some of its character designs. I believe the artwork implies that he is human, but just an extreme caricature of a scholastic/bookish human. Therefore scruffy hair, scruffy facial hair (which hides any evidence of a mouth), glasses (which hide any evidence of eyes), and a nose that would win a 100m race from the starting blocks.

That said, taking a closer look just now at the artwork, I actually notice a clawed hand. Could he perhaps be a mole or something instead? Like a relative of the mysterious mole people mentioned at Mt. Gulug? If he is, he's kept that a secret... The mole people are one of Gaia's greatest unsolved mysteries.

But even if it is just an exaggerated nose, it definitely looks beak-ish. And I personally love your plague doctor inspiration idea.

Yeah, the miasma theory that bad air was the cause of illnesses is an old one that took some time to go. When people didn't understand how germs, viruses, bacteria, etc, spread (or that they even existed) they believed illnesses could be due to bad air. And at times that evil spirits could be within, or be the cause of, that bad air.

So an attitude of the day in general was to chuck herbs at everything as that would help freshen up that bad air.

So naturally, some genius noticed that you could pack a lot of herbs in a creepy beak and walk around looking like a humanoid carrion pecker from Hell in order to minimise the risk of inhaling that bad air yourself.

Doctor Tot is a legit scholar and a bit of a polymath. His interests include astronomy and history in addition to having some degree of knowledge of medicine as you describe.

Some people have speculated that he could be intended to be a loose representation of the Egyptian scribe god Thoth. One of Thoth's forms, if you like, was a man with a ibis head, and he was also associated with broad branches of knowledge (including astronomy and at times medicine).

However, I believe people who think that Doctor Tot actually is Thoth might be going by the apparent similarity of the name—but it isn't exact. I looked into it and トット (totto) is how it is rendered in the Japanese, I believe, and searching for this word in Google only brings up a Japanese comedy duo called Totto. The Egyptian god Thoth, however, is usually represented in Japanese with トート (tōto) as far as I can tell. Similar, but not the same. Though honestly we would need to ask somebody who is actually an expert in Japanese about that (like Ryan). I most certainly am not.

But the point is it is also—like your plague doctor idea—an interesting one that adds another layer to this fascinating character.

Overall, certain visual aspects of Doctor Tot's design do match the plague doctor vibes, but with a gargantuan dosage of friendly warmth.

I didn't even know about the Thoth theory. That is fascinating. His hands in the artwork are reminiscent of bird claws. Dr. Tot's laboratory has a lot of astronomy tools in it. In some ways, astronomy played a big role in the story with planetary alignments, moons, stellazzio coins, etc. Thoth is also a god of the moon and Treno is (for some reason) a city of perpetual night. All fascinating stuff.

I love finding things that I never noticed while playing.