Abingdon Medical Museum
Opens: Early May, 2011
Location: On the corner of Valley Street and Reservoir Street, in downtown Abingdon
Admission: $10 for adults, $5 for children
Details: info@abingdonmedicalmuseum.com
Phone: (276) 698-8277 before May 9 and (276) 206-8691 thereafter
Imagine this: You’re at the dentist, and it’s time to get a cavity repaired. So he takes out his dental drill and, to power it, starts pedaling his foot.
That, said Damian Sooklal, is not all too far in the past.
“It ran like those sewing machines that you have to pedal,” said Sooklal, owner of the Abingdon Medical Museum, which is scheduled to open in May and will display, among other things, a foot-powered dental drill. “This was in the early 1900s.”
Back then, he said, such luxuries were afforded only by those who had means; others might instead simply have the aching tooth pulled with pliers by a member of the community.
“I think it’s very interesting to see how medicine has evolved over the years,” said Sooklal, a doctor who practices in Abingdon. “We have come so far in such a short time.”
While Sooklal might not be the only person in Abingdon with a skeleton in the closet, he may be the only one to put it on display. “It used to belong to a medical school,” he explained.
He said a real human skeleton will be among the items on display at the museum, along with an eclectic assortment of antique medical devices, most from the mid-1800s through early 1900s and some dating as far back as the 1700s.
Medical museums are rare, Sooklal said. He would know – for year’s he’s been a collector of old medical devices. It started as a hobby that grew into a collection – and, now, has evolved into a museum.
He said the museum will be organized by category, with each of the 11 rooms in the century-old house that will contain it housing a different medical specialty.
It will feature such curiosities as old wooden legs and wheelchairs and what he calls “instruments of destruction” that were used to terminate complicated pregnancies that otherwise meant certain death for the mother.
There also are instruments used to bleed patients, a practice in centuries past when doctors thought removing “bad humors” would cure illness – but in reality it did more harm than good.
“I have this little machine called a scarificator, a small little box that you can put in the palm of your hand; the horrific little instrument that they used to bleed patients back then [in the late 1700s],” he said.
“You’d put it on a patient’s skin, like his thigh or his arm or something, and press this knob, and all of these 12 blades would come out and cut him. … The blood would start pouring, and that was considered advanced medical technology back then.”
Sooklal said he plans to promote the museum primarily to tourists and school groups, but he hopes that others in Abingdon and Bristol area will come to educate themselves about these medical curiosities.
“Back then the cure was worse than the disease,” he said. “We can see that now.”
dmccown@bristolnews.com
(276) 791-0701
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