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The curation and collection of work in this exhibit attempts to unravel a narrative of medicinal and scientific practice in the antebellum period. Individual texts were selected, in part, to create a multi-dimensional body of work, but also to capture the experience of what medicinal practice was like during the 19thcentury. Questions that this exhibit explores are, “What kind of procedures and practices in medicine would one commonly encounter during this period?” “What new scientific discoveries were made during the antebellum, and how did they influence medicine?” and “What were they social implications of medicinal practice in such a tumultuous time period?” Accordingly, pieces displayed range from specific procedures in medicine, like, the kind of drugs administered for a specific ailment, to breaking discoveries, like the use of an inhaled anesthetic. Educational theory in medicine is also addressed, as some texts speak to the schools and their pedagogical practices. After each text was selected, they were specifically, historically analyzed in regard to how they contributed to the overarching theme of this exhibit. By observing these texts together, one finds examples of brutality and gore without much inspection. Although, as one explores the motivations behind the ugly results found in these exhibits, the collection quickly reveals itself as a mixed bag.

The antebellum period is often depicted as the harbinger of calamity (The Civil War) as its features of slavery and cruelty are prevalent. Additionally, this time period saw the absolute preaching divinely destined sexism in every facet of public life. Although socially negative, the antebellum period was not without progress, as writers and activists like Margaret Fuller and Frederick Douglas worked to change the racial and gendered spaces toward more equitable terms. In accordance with these progressive examples medicine in the antebellum period featured examples of positive advancement. The founding of Florence Nightingale’s School of Nursing contributed to the promotion and normalization of the education of women, as well as providing them with a position of social and economic professionalism. In a neighboring exhibit, one finds research around the medicinal practices of enslaved African Americans as being more humane than the standard and providing discoveries still in use today. As referenced in the introduction to this exhibit, the motivations for these institutions requires examination. Florence Nightingale’s school features positive motivations with positive results. The medicinal discoveries of enslaved African Americans, however, shows the horrifically and negatively motivated institution of slavery, inhibiting the discovery and widespread use of these practices. Additionally, the selection on the practices of scientific racism is obvious to hold negative motivations, producing abhorrent outcomes. As positive produces positive, negative produces negative. This rule however, in examination of the rest of these texts together, hardly holds true. As one examines the regards the Old Operating Theatre, for example, the quick and simple evaluation may be, “Oh, how awful.” Indeed, the brutality found in public operations without anesthetics is a jarring, negative outcome. Although, the question of why such an institution existed must be asked. The answer, or rather, the motivation for such an institution, is found in its location of a school of medicine: a place of education. Of course, the methods and results thereof are completely horrific, but the tonal motivations of educational theory and the keeping of best practices are not dismissible ideas. These kinds of nuanced discrepancies in the motivations for, and the results of these exhibits are what makes them interesting.

This exhibit, if evaluated too quickly or superficially, can easily lead one to simply shame the medicinal practices of antebellum. But, this assessment is incomplete, as the exhibit features both positive and negative applications of medicine. Additionally, where this exhibit might feature such binaries of good and bad, the examination of the motivation behind the practices on display reveals even more nuanced conclusions worth reaching.

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As is common knowledge, during the antebellum period, African Americans were the property of white, male landowners. The enslaved people of the United States were often referred to as cattle, animalistic, and were subsequently bought, sold, and treated like livestock. One such example of the dehumanizing treatment of slaves was their lack of access to adequate medical care. As they were conceptualized as animals, they were only treated with enough care to ensure the highest amount of labor was possible. Of course, this led to horrifying outcomes of malpractice on the part of slave owners, but the same cannot be said for slaves. Research conducted by Bridgewater State University suggests that slaves practiced medicine on each other that not only surpassed that of their owners but would later shape the American Pharmacopeia and aid in the advancement of western medicine (Fitzgerald, 2016). African slaves brought their own medicinal practices and cultural knowledge to the Americas. Slaves would care for one another and provide treatment for those in need. Initially, as can be predicted, this behavior was discouraged by slave owners, as it implied slaves' education and knowledge. Although, when owners saw that slave-to-slave medical care was financially beneficial, as the slaves would continue to live and work, they became disinvolved. Without the highly formal and regaled system of medical education in the 19th century, slaves provided prosperous, explicitly helpful, and newfound uses of asafetida, burdock root, and smallpox inoculations (Fitzgerald, 2016).

Sources:

Fitzgerald, Colin (2016). African American Slave Medicine of the 19th Century. Undergraduate Review, 12, 44-50. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev/vol12/iss1/10

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In 1839, Samuel George Morton published Crania Americana: a book of incredibly detailed illustrations of human skulls. The skulls themselves, once belonged to indigenous peoples in North and South America. Through these illustrations, Morton claimed that the skulls of Native people were of a different consistency than the skulls of white, Euro-Americans. For example, in writing about one particular Native skull, he states, "The structure of his mind appears to be different from that of the white man, nor can the two harmonise in their social relations except on the most limited scale."
In the 19th century, "science," or what can be more accurately described now as pseudoscience, was used to legitimize and validate the ideas and practice of racism. Although Crania Americana is only one example of such pseudoscience, its recognition, acclaim, and influence at the time cannot be understated. Charles Darwin called Morton and his work an authority on the subject of race.
Racial relations may seem of marginal importance where medicine is concerned, but anatomical study is far from insignificant. If the most powerful and accredited scientists in the antebellum, across America and Europe, thought of this work as exemplary, the consequences breach the social sphere. The eugenic ideas in Morton's work festered in medicine, religion, politics, governance, and more.

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Crania Americana -the most important book in the history of scientific racism

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In 1846, William Morton, an America dentist, first publicly demonstrated the use of inhaled anesthesia: nitrous oxide. In the operating theatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Morton painlessly removed a tumor from a man's neck. Although nitrous oxide may seem commonplace today, as it is often administered during dental surgeries, its discovery has had a remarkably positive impact in medicine for both patients and surgeons.
Although the general theme of this work, aside from the Nightingale school, has been notably negative, the discovery and proven demonstration of an inhaled anesthetic comes as a welcome, positive change to the narrative. How fitting it seems, to display and hold viewings of brutally painful surgeries in the post above, only to refer to the beginning of the end of such grotesque demonstrations in the post beneath it. Medicine in the Antebellum may have been barbaric and ignorant, but it was not without progress.

Sources:
Boote F. (1847). "Surgical operations performed during insensibility produced by the inhalation of sulphuric ether". Lancet. 49 (1218): 5–8.
US National Library of Medicine.

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In the middle of the 1800s, Jeremiah Curtis and his partner Benjamin A. Perkins began marketing Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup. The small concoction was meant to be administered to young children who were restlessly teething. Advertised as a harmless and innocent miracle remedy, it carried a sinister set of ingredients. In its adolescent in sales, it was sold at 24 proof with 65 mg of morphine per fluid ounce. Although the product would be infamously branded a "Baby Killer," it was sold over the counter until the 1930s.

Like the Old Operating Theatre, Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup serves as another example of the ignorant, naive, and irresponsible nature of medicine in the antebellum. As brutal and grotesque as public operations are on a social level, administering morphine to infants is grossly reckless, showing a lack of understanding and reverence for pharmaceutical knowledge and human life.
The advertisement pictured below continues to lend itself to the classed perspective of this Padlet. The mother and children pictured below are depicted as belonging to the upper, wealthier class, all the while potentially killing the youngest child to "soothe" it. Irony abounds.

Source: Anesthesiology Reflections from the Wood Library-Museum  |   January 2012

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In London, 1822, The Old Operating Theatre was established, adding on to the preexisting space of St. Thomas's Hospital. As explained in the video, the site would have been a gruesome, gory, screaming mess on any given day, as the operations did not include the use of anesthesia or antiseptics. Additionally, The Old Operating Theatre was specifically established for women' operations, thereby making cesarean section a common procedure.
As much as the room was a violent, frightening space, it also served as an educational one. Medical students could observe and take note of surgical procedures taking place in the theatre.

The idea of an operating theatre without anesthetics or antiseptics strikes a vein in the arm of irony and hypocrisy. At such an academic, high-browed institution, one could find blood curdling horrors. One need not look far in the antebellum period to find other striking contradictions, e.g., brutal slavery in the most refined areas of the Deep South. The evident and contradictory nature between gallantly clad men in powdered wigs aggressively holding down a man for brutal surgery almost needn't be noted, but by the same token, it is so ridiculous that one can hardly escape the idea without a mention.

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The Old Operating Theatre with Mark Pilkington | Medical London

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Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery

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Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery

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In July of 1860, Florence Nightingale founded the first secular nursing school (King's College, London). By establishing the school, Nightingale established herself as the founder of modern nursing. Most notably, Nightingale was at the forefront of professionalizing nursing positions, thereby legitimizing a professional occupation for women in society. (BBC).

Pictured below:
- Florence Nightingale and her first students (King's College, London).
In this image, Nightingale is much older than she is pictured in the image directly below. Her clothes suggest her age and wisdom (the habit and robes) as well as her leadership position.
- Portrait of Florence Nightingale (Henry Hering, National Portrait Gallery, London).
The second image, Nightingale in her youth, depicts a Nightingale presumably before she started her school.
- The Florence Nightingale School (King's College, Pictured in 1915 & 2006).