CONTENTS
Eighteenth-Century Medical Myths
Primary
Source
Teaching
Strategy
Colonial Williamsburg Teaching Resources
Teaching News
Quote of the Month
The
Next
Electronic Field Trip is
Taxes, Tea and Tyranny
October 7, 2004
NEW!
2004–2005 Teaching
Resources Catalog
20042005 Electronic Field
Trip Scholarships
|
TOP STORIES
Eighteenth-Century Medical Myths
Medical history is full of surprising facts and legendary stories. A myth often becomes so popular that it is incorporated into history. Explore four questions and answers addressing some commonly held misconceptions about eighteenth-century medicine. How many of these myths have you heard before. . . and how many did you believe?
Learn
More
Primary Source: Virginia Gazette Notice
Eighteenth-century newspapers are incredibly rich sources of information. Examine a notice from the July 29, 1773, Virginia Gazette attempting to dispel rumors of rampant illness in the city of Williamsburg. Learn
More
Teaching Strategy: Home Remedies or Professional Care (Lesson)
When illness struck in the eighteenth century, families often used home remedies for extended periods before consulting an apothecary. This lesson helps students compare modern home remedies for a common illness with those used in the eighteenth century. They will also consider the necessity of seeking “professional” help when an illness persists and the possible reasons why such assistance might not be sought. This lesson is available as a PDF file.
Colonial
Williamsburg Teaching Resources for Your
Classroom
Colonial
Williamsburg offers a variety of quality
instructional materials dealing with 18th-century
life, including:
Anne's Story: 1747 (book)
Potions, Ails, and Smallpox Tales (videotape with Web content)
—Physick: The Professional Practice of Medicine in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1740–1775 (book)
—Our Common Passage (videotape)
Every Man his own Doctor (reproduction pamphlet)
Learn More!
Teaching
News
Anticipation guides can be very useful teaching tools. They provide students and teachers with prereading statements about topics that will be encountered in a book or novel. The KidReach Web site offers teacher-created anticipation guides for many common K-12 supplemental literacy readings.
Learn More!
Quote
of the Month
“OUR Country is unhappily subject to several very sharp Distempers. The Multitude of Marshes, Swamps, and great Waters, send forth so many Fogs, and Exhalations, that the Air is continually damp with them: This, in Spight of all our Precautions, is apt to shut up the Pores at once, and hinder insensible Perspiration. From hence proceed FEVERS, COUGHS, QUINSIES, PLEURISIES, and CONSUMPTIONS, with a dismal Trail of other Diseases, which make as fatal Havock here, in Proportion to our Number, as the Plague does in the Eastern Parts of the World."
Every Man his own Doctor: OR,
The
Poor Planter's Physician, 1736
|