Have a backyard adventure with exhibit on early Virginia medicine

June 6, 1799, found Dr. George Cabell at Red Hill, treating his old friend Patrick Henry.

An 1887 account of the night’s events, from Moses Tyler’s “American Statesman — Patrick Henry,” says Henry was suffering from an inflammation of the intestine. All the remedies tried by the surgeon — builder of Lynchburg’s Point of Honor where a fall festival is set to take place Oct. 11 — had failed. He gave Henry a vial of mercury liquid.

If you’re going
WHAT: Point of Honor, Day at the Point fall festival
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Oct. 11
WHERE: 112 Cabell St., Lynchburg
COST: Free
INFO: The festival includes a dress parade, music, interpreters, a batteau on exhibit, quilting, fire-making, bobbin lace, open hearth cooking, spinning and weaving demonstrations, animals, food and free guided tours. Regular hours for the museum and its guided tours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Call (434) 455-6226 or (434) 847-1867.

“I suppose, doctor, this is your last resort?” Henry asked Cabell.

“I am sorry to say, Governor, that it is,” Cabell said, and explained the dire state of affairs.

“What will be the effect of this medication?” Henry asked.

“It will give you immediate relief, or … ,” Cabell replied, and let the thought remain unfinished.

“You mean, doctor, that it will only give relief, or will prove fatal immediately?” Henry asked.

When Cabell told Henry he could only live a short time without it, Henry asked Cabell to excuse him, pulled down his cap over his eyes and prayed. After he finished, he took the mercury and drank it.

The account is featured on a panel in an exhibit at Point of Honor called “Medicine in Early Virginia.”

The exhibit is housed in a modest room built as a dependency to the original 1815 high-style Federal mansion on Daniel’s Hill; the room is now the Diggs Gallery.

Cabell trained at the College of Philadelphia. It had the country’s first, and at that time only, medical school, said Doug Harvey, director of the Lynchburg Museum System, which includes Point of Honor.
The exhibit is intended to give an idea of what the practice of medicine was like in Cabell’s day, he said.

The exhibit includes examples of medical instruments of the period. Some, such as forceps, are earlier iterations of instruments still in use today.

Others serve as reminders of the quantum leap made through scientific advances during the past 200 years. One reminder is a carved animal horn, circa 1800, used to catch blood after a letting.

When Cabell practiced medicine, nearly all physicians were trained in the theory of humors.

The theory had governed medical practice since the time of Hippocrates, who lived before the birth of Christ. It held that four humors governed health: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.

Ill health was thought to result from an imbalance of humors; one “cure” was to bleed a patient to remove excess humors.

While some aspects of medicine then might seem primitive by today’s standards, others marked the beginnings of modern Western practices.

For instance, in 1786, Dr. Edward Jenner introduced the idea of vaccination. To inoculate against smallpox, he would insert the secretions of people who had survived smallpox’s weaker viral cousin, cow pox, into an uninfected person’s nose.

Another item in the exhibit is a chest with vials, bottles and drawers of medicines. The medicine chest was an attempt to standardize the practice of medicine and came with a book on the recommended use for each of the chest’s contents.

During the festival, called a Day at the Point, Dr. Charles Driscoll will portray Cabell and will supplement the items on display with more medical equipment. Driscoll will be in the small gallery where the panel telling the story of George Cabell and Patrick Henry hangs.

It says that after Henry swallowed the mercury, Cabell went outside and wept for his friend.

After regaining his composure, Cabell returned, and found his friend and patient regarding the blood congealing underneath his fingernails.

Henry spoke words of love to the family gathered around him, and told Cabell how great a benefit the Christian religion was to a man about to die.

“… he continued to breathe very softly for some moments;” the panels says, “after which they who were looking upon him saw that his life had departed.”