The Museum of Riverside will turn back the clock to showcase latter 19th century customs and medicinal practices when the museum reopens its Heritage House next week following renovations.
“Quackery & Cures in the Victorian Age” will be the post-summer exhibit, beginning Sept. 5, featuring a range of showpieces and details on what it was like to, literally, survive in the 1890s.
“The exhibition examines a period that saw an explosion of scientific and industrial progress that led to an increase in population and, perhaps not coincidentally, an increase in medical maladies,” according to a museum statement. “Amid all this change, the line between cures and quackery was blurred. The struggle to find relief from incurable, painful and deadly ailments hit home.”
Catharine Bettner, owner of the property that later became Heritage House, is profiled in the exhibit. She moved into the two-story home in 1892, after suffering the loss of her husband, daughter and two of her three sons, according to the museum.
“The Bettners and other Riversiders, like so many across the nation, risked treatments that could cause unpleasant side effects, long-term damage, addiction and death,” the museum stated.
Bottles with descriptions of purported elixirs will be on display, along with 19th century “photographs, medical textbooks and a set of lancets used for bloodletting,” according to the announcement.
Quackery & Cures in the Victorian Age will run through Nov. 23.
Heritage House has been shuttered for months after undergoing various upgrades, including new fencing and a new paint job, officials said.