Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 7, 1994 TAG: 9412070122
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A bouquet? Candy? Chewing gum?
No ... medicine.
Fourth-graders at William E. Cundiff Elementary School mixed the herbs Tuesday and put them into small bags called headache sacks - a medical treatment during Colonial days in Virginia.
Two hundred years ago, the sacks were placed beside sufferers' pillows, supposedly to stop headaches.
Today, people rely on aspirin or other medicines for the treatment for headaches, but the pupils at the elementary school in Vinton will have a chance to test their headache sacks.
Evelyn Kernan, a teacher of Colonial medicine, told the pupils that the sacks are supposed to remain effective for about three months.
The pupils are learning about 18th century medicine as part of a statewide educational outreach program by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation that teaches Virginia's early history through hands-on activities.
The foundation is the state agency that administers two living-history museums: Jamestown Settlement, a re-creation of America's first permanent English colony; and the Yorktown Victory Center, a museum of the American Revolution.
The foundation has a team of teachers who travel to elementary schools throughout Virginia to talk about medicine in the 18th century and the culture of the Powhatan Indians. The teachers will visit all of Roanoke County's elementary schools this year.
Kernan kept the children enthralled with her presentation about Colonial-era diseases, common remedies and surgical practices. She used medical
instruments of the period to demonstrate surgical techniques.
Some children shuddered when she showed them a saw used for amputating arms and legs.
She described the procedure for "bleeding" patients - extracting blood to achieve a better balance of fluids in the body. And what famous Colonial American bled to death because of the treatment?
George Washington, one student answered correctly.
Student Amber Clark enjoyed the presentation but said bleeding people was gruesome. "That must have hurt," she said.
Kernan said patients often became unconscious because of the pain of treatments. Doctors then would use smelling salts to revive them.
Doctors had to do double duty as dentists and pharmacists because those professions had not yet evolved, Kernan said. "They had to mix their medicines and pull teeth."
Fourth-grader Daniel Leacock and his classmates had lots of questions when Kernan finished her talk.
How did one become a doctor if there were no medical schools? By a seven-year apprenticeship, she said.
Were there vaccinations? No, because doctors didn't know how to make injections into the bloodstream.
And there's one other thing they might like to know, Kernan told the fourth-graders: 18th-century doctors had to be able to read Latin, because books for making prescriptions and other medical procedures were written in that language.
by CNB