An exhibit at the Lane County Historical Museum in Eugene offers a portrait of health care during the pivotal century between 1840 and 1940. Curator Faith Kreskey took KLCC’s Rachael McDonald on a tour.
Kreskey: “We have a pretty amazing medical collection. It’s several thousand objects total. But what I did is I combed through the entire collection. And then I tried to find the people associated with the objects and tried to get photos and stories and actual solid history about the people who used the objects.”
Kreskey points to an aged leather bag, containing tools and bottles is more than 100 years old.
Kreskey: “It’s a saddlebag medicine case. And this was actually used by Dr. EE Ruff who lived in Junction City. And he was well-known in the area because he would actually travel out on horseback to see patients. And a lot of doctors wouldn’t travel because they would lose work hours on their farm or their other business to go travel to see the people.”
Kreskey says doctors weren’t paid well in the late 1800s. They usually had to have another source of income to get by. She says the first known doctor in Lane County was CW Patterson.
Kreskey: “He actually came here in 1851 and he didn’t practice medicine for another 10 years because they were to healthy to need a doctor. That’s what’s written in some of the oral histories.”
Kreskey created a diorama showing what she imagines Doctor Patterson’s home looked like inside. There’s a table and chairs, a fireplace and a portrait of Patterson on the wall.
Another diorama shows the sitting room of Colbert Cannon and his wife Alma. In the early 20th century the husband and wife both practiced medicine in Eugene.
Kreskey: “Colbert’s card mentioned that he practiced electric medicine so he probably had some kind of devices in his office. And Alma Anderson Cannon Miller practiced proto-gynecology. The idea that women needed specific separate treatments and kind of a scientific way of going about gathering that information and doing it was pretty new at the time.”
Kreskey found many items that belonged to the couple—a gramophone, typewriter, and a beaded evening dress. They lived just a couple of blocks from their office.
Kreskey: “The medical practice is where the Wells Fargo building is downtown on Broadway. It was a building called the White Temple. It was suite 207 and 208 so they had two adjoining second floor offices. Their house was down at Willamette and 8th.”
Another interesting display shows examples of what were called patent medicines. These concoctions were marketed as cure-alls for aches and pains, nerves and other ailments. But, Kreskey says they weren’t patented and they weren’t really medicine.
Kreskey: “Dr. Pierce’s, for example, was mostly just flavored alcohol. The more dangerous ones, I have an example, it’s a product called a “make-man” tablet that’s supposed to calm the nerves and cure weakness in men, but the first two ingredients were arsenic and strychnine.”
The side of a barn in Cottage Grove was painted with an advertisement for Dr. Pierce’s tonic. Kreskey says Pierce actually got sued for false advertising.
The No Harm Intended exhibit traces advances in medical knowledge over the turn of the 20th century.
Kreskey says a lot changed when the state appointed the first health officer for Lane County T. W. Harris:
Kreskey: “Typhoid was endemic in Eugene from 1888 onwards and there were yearly outbreaks that just kept happening. It came to a head in 1905 when there were 300 cases total. At least 14 people died.”
Harris suspected it had to do with the city’s water supply. He told everyone to boil their water until the cause was discovered.
Kreskey: “What he figured out is the sewer lines that service most of the downtown and the University let out 80 feet away from the well that provided all the city’s water.”
Harris was able to make changes to clean up the water. Kreskey says by 1907 the number of typhoid cases was nearly eliminated.
Kreskey says one of her major takeaways from putting together this exhibit is that even those doctors and healers who didn’t have a lot of medical education had the same intention.
Kreskey: “They were really just trying to solve these massive problems, you know, how do you fix someone who has a health issue? And they were doing it with the tools they had the best way they knew how.”
The No Harm Intended exhibit is at the Lane County Historical Museum through March.
