Today was a day filled with lots of water to say the
least. I am thankful that before we left for the trip, I purchased a purple
umbrella from Walmart that works quite well. After breakfast, my friends and I
got geared up and prepared to venture out in the pouring rain. We arrived at
the street car and from there we went to the Cabildo. The Cabildo is one of
Louisiana’s history museums and it was very interesting. The building was next
door to the St Louis Cathedral and it had a fancy staircase but due to water
damage, the floor was sideways at some points. The building was filled with oil
paintings from the French revolution, the Louisiana purchase, the civil war and
much more. The museum’s first floor contained the oldest pieces of history and
as you went up the stairs, the history became more modern. There was a painting
that stood out to me that was on the third floor. It was a painting of a women
of color and she was wearing a white and blue lace dress that had a bow in the
center. She owned slaves and that shocked me. I know that slavery still exists
today and that every race has had slavery. However, I was not aware that people
of color back then owned slaves. I was also told that the French people who
owned slaves were the most humane about the way that they treated their slaves.
Their slaves worked eight hour days and they converted them over to Catholicism
so they were always given their Sundays off to worship. Also, during the
harvest season, since they were worked much harder, they were given extra time
off in the winter. These slaves were also paid so eventually they could pay for
their freedom. Even though slavery is brutal and it isn’t right, as I was
learning about this, if I was going to be a slave, I would take that offer over
being worked twenty-four hours a day with a harder life. After the museum tour,
my stomach was growling and we decided to go to a place that our culinary tour told
us about yesterday. It was the Italian café that served the Muffalata sandwich.
I had a mozzarella grilled cheese sandwich that was served with tomatoes and
honey dew melon. For dessert, I was going to order the strawberry gelato that
we had yesterday on the tour, but I decided to try something new so I asked for
a sample of the sour cherry gelato and it was even better. It even had large
cherry pieces in it. I ordered a small but I could have eaten an extra-large
scoop because it was that delicious. Their coffee shop served the chicory in the
coffee as well and I am not sure if I will like that or not but while I am down
here, I plan to try it just to be experimental.
For the
second part of class today, we went on a Pharmacy tour. The first pharmacy was
in New Orleans with the first licensed pharmacist and the tour guide told us
that their test was a three hour long oral exam. The man’s name was Louis
Dutilho Jr. I was shocked at what people used to medicate themselves back then
and I still cannot figure out how they managed to stay alive. A fun fact that I
learned is that the first toothbrush was made from a pig’s rib and the bristles
was the pigs tail. That’s some good dental hygiene right there! You could also
purchase heroin over the counter and the first person who used it described as
feeling like a hero afterwards so that is how heroin got its name. The way that
they used needles back then stressed me out on the tour. I am very strict on
needle usage and making sure that all equipment is sterile. This tour
demonstrated just how advanced we have become in the world of medicine today.
On the second floor of the pharmacy is where the birthing center was and there were
some other medicines up there. Labor and delivery is one of my passions and I
was quite curious to see their methods of delivering babies back then because I
know it was quite different. Their methods looked so painful! I couldn’t imagine going through what those
women went through. For a C-section, their incision was quite large and the
forceps used looked very painful as well. They were also rusty and not health
at all for the babies. There was so much pressure applied that it probably
caused brain damage to some of the babies. I also learned that when they were practicing
C-sections, they r practice them on the slave women. As if they weren’t going
through enough torture already. The doctor who was performing the C-sections’
name was Dr. Robert E. Harris and out of the 79 C-sections he performed, 19 of
them were in Louisiana. By the 1930’s, they became a relatively safe practice. At
the pharmacy tour, there was also a wedding that was supposed to take place and
that is why the museum was going to shut down early but I feel bad for the
couple who is deciding to get married today. Hopefully it is an elopement so
that they can go get married elsewhere. I do not think it was going to be a
large wedding since there wasn’t a lot of space out there in the courtyard. When
the pharmacy tour was finished, we walked in the pouring rain again to the
street car and the next car was supposed to arrive in ten minutes. I think that
there was something wrong with one of the cars because it was taking super long
and you could see the train lights on but the train car wasn’t moving. We were
all so cold and wet and we called an uber instead and she delivered us back to
the hotel so that we could get dry and warm to enjoy our lazy night at the
hotel.
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