William Thompson (archer)

Transcription

We are standing in the Becoming Southerners gallery and behind us on this wall are items related to the Cocke and Archer families of Virginia. These items date to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One member of this family was Dr. Richard Thompson Archer. Dr. Archer was born in Amelia County, Virginia, in 1797 at the lodge. As a young man Richard Thompson attended the College of William and Mary and learned to practice medicine. Perhaps his inspiration came from the Cocke family physician, Dr. Walter Bennett, who lived at the woodlands with the family. With this English medical chest, Dr. Archer practiced medicine in Mississippi. While practices at the time were not as sophisticated as they are today, they were by no means basic. Innovations in chemistry and new practices and techniques helped revolutionize medicine. Most medicines at the time were herbal, but they did also use items such as mercury, opium, and laudanum as well. Other medical practices of the time dated back centuries to thoughts used in ancient Greece and Rome. One of these was the idea of the four humors. The four humors were blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. When the humors were not in balance, a person was unhealthy. When they were in balance, a person was considered to be healthy. By the time Dr. Archer began practicing medicine, many of these beliefs were falling out of favor. One technique that was still being used, though, was bloodletting. Menstruation was used as a model for the effectiveness of bleeding a patient to health. One tool that was particularly favored during the nineteenth century was the scarificator. In this drawer is actually the scarificator that Dr. Richard Thompson Archer used practicing medicine in Mississippi. This is what the scarificator looked like, and it was cast from brass, and if you notice this lever at the top, that is what the doctor would pull back in order to release 12 steel blades from the base, and those blades would bleed the patient and hopefully bring them back to health.