What a Time to be Alive

Today we experienced a monsoon (sort of) and went to the Cabildo museum and the Pharmacy Museum. The rain was coming down hard and the wind made using an umbrella seemingly pointless and nearly impossible. The Cabildo was a nice warm space though. We saw all kinds of art but I thought it was neat to see portraits of people we had already learned about such as the Baroness Pontalba, who was a businesswoman and, to be honest, sort of a boss. She survived being shot four times by her father-in-law during a time where one would think that health care would be so scarce that it would have been difficult enough to survive only one gunshot wound! 

                                             (see the uni-brow?)

I often wonder how accurate these portraits are because some of the people have some humorous facial characteristics, like uni-brows or mustached women. I can imagine the ghosts of these people hovering over their portraits There was also a nice portrait of Marie Laveau.  I think she’s pretty awesome as well, known as the Queen of Voodoo. She had daughters who looked like her who would run out and do errands for her so the silly townspeople just assumed that Marie Laveau was a witch who never aged. She just went with that idea as it brought her business from people who needed healing of some sort. Whatever it takes to get by, I say.

We also visited the pharmacy museum today. The building just had that old look to it that I really love, with sort of a musty smell. It was somewhat dimly lit light I would have imagined it was back when it was functioning as a pharmacy. I was in absolute awe over some of the stories we were told and I loved the look of some of the old tools that were used, especially the hypodermic needles. They were super thick, blunt, slightly curved pieces of lead, pewter, or some other sort of metal. I would have never let someone stab me with one of those things. 

(Scary, right?)

There was an exhibit focusing on a maternity ward that discussed some typical practices having to do with cesarean sections, or in some very sad cases, emergency abortions. This case pictured holds forceps used to assist with delivering the baby if the mother was struggling. 

It also shows the tools used for emergency abortions if had become obvious that the mother would not survive the delivery. Mackenzie, another student, said that the exhibit was a great form of birth control! I cannot imagine having a child during that time, or really experiencing any type of medical care. it seemed as if some of the treatments caused more harm than good. It was interesting to hear about how some things that we consider poison or very dangerous drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, and arsenic, were used as medicines. They considered the violent symptoms they experienced, like projectile vomiting, to be a good thing, as if they were ridding the body of all things that were making them ill. I'm so thankful to have been born in a time after so many developments in technology and science that have made life so much easier.