The Stone Fort Museum is hosting a reception and lecture to celebrate the exhibit, Misery & Remedy: The Rise and Eradication of Epidemic Diseases in East Texas. Six epidemic diseases – smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, Spanish influenza, tuberculosis and polio – are examined through the mid-1900s, focusing on early remedies, scientific discoveries, and the advancement of public health. The exhibit includes more than 150 artifacts from 23 institutional and private lenders throughout the East Texas region and across the United States. A wide range of objects from bloodletting devices to a nurse’s uniforms and a pocket microscope to a ginger jar tell the story of epidemics in East Texas.
A major lender to the exhibit, Dr. Robert Carroll, will take visitors on a collector’s tour of Misery & Remedy. As a retired physician in Nacogdoches who has been collecting medical books, furniture and tools for several years, Carroll has amassed a collection that includes 250 medical books, 1,000 medicinal, furniture and equipment items, and a large collection of medical ‘quackery’ equipment. Artifacts such as a wooden exam table, on loan from Dr. Carroll, illustrate the big changes that have taken place in medicine in the past 150 years.
Melissa Prycer, Executive Director of Dallas Heritage Village, will present, The Hectic Flush: The Fiction and Reality of Consumption. Prycer will explore the impact of consumption on the public imagination in the 19th century. Consumption, known today as tuberculosis, was the leading cause of death in the 19th century. But it didn’t behave quite like other diseases, and thus captured the imaginations of writers, artists, and the general public. Many literary figures, both artists and fictional characters, are connected to consumption. Focusing on one author, L. M. Montgomery (best known for Anne of Green Gables), Prycer will explore the gradual changes in public perception of the disease in the early 20th century.
The exhibit, Misery & Remedy, will remain on display through December 20. Regular museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday – Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, and closed university holidays
For more information, please call (936) 468-2408, email: stonefort@sfasu.edu, or visit www.sfasu/stonefort
