Historically, North Americans have treated doctors, surgeons, and pharmacists like gods. This inclination is an odd, perhaps misguided choice, considering this country’s long tradition of poisoning or butchering patients in their hours of desperate need. Which may be why one of the most haunted buildings awaiting visitors of modern-day New Orleans is our Pharmacy Museum. Located in the French Quarter, the building was originally home to the very first regulated pharmacy in the country and run by Louis Joseph Dufilho, Jr., aka America’s O.G. licensed pharmacist. With a spacious street-level store, courtyard full of medicinal plants, and two stories of upstairs living quarters which eventually were turned in a medical ward for those dying of yellow fever, the building was an essential part of the life in the early French Quarter, patronized by some of the sickest people New Orleans could cough up.
Dr. Joseph Dupas, who purchased the pharmacy building from Dufilho in 1855 for $18,000, was a purported mad doctor—his sinister experiments some of those eventual yellow fever patients were subjected to will be discussed in a follow-up post. But on an average day you’d easily come face to face with a variety of demented and questionable implementations. To name a few: leeches, opium, cocaine, alcohol, arsenic, and a lotta bootleg voodoo remedies being sold under code names to white patrons too embarrassed to support healers of color.
You know, typical Walgreens stuff.
The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum
AIN’T NO PARTY LIKE A PHARMACIST’S PARTY
Much of early “medicine,” no matter how dignified titles like “licensed pharmacist” make it sound, were just intoxicants, like pure grain alcohol, with a dash of something therapeutic thrown in because science y’all. Some medications were genuinely beneficial plant or chemical extracts, but as “modern medicine”—and the propaganda advertising it—rose, patrons affluent enough to invest at pharmacies began turning away from the natural remedies and get into “the hard stuff." Only poor people and people of color relied on dirty roots and witch’s brews, you see. Plus it was hard to argue drinking ginger tea felt better than smoking opium when New Orleanians were feeling funky.
Here are a few of New Orleans’ favorite bad medicines, and their vile side effects, from days gone by:
Arsenic, Mercury, and Lead.
“The only difference between poison and medicine is the dose,” the old adage says, and it’s mostly true. Nearly anything, from Vitamin A to baby aspirin, can be used as a therapy or a deadly agent depending on how much you’re shoveling into a human body. The trouble is that we didn’t fully understand until the last century how much damage even a pinch of poison could cause, especially in the case of heavy metals which accumulate in tissues for years before organs fail and cancers grow. One example is arsenic, a known carcinogen that New Orleanians used to treat sexually transmitted diseases. Nobel Prize winner Paul Ehrlich actually turned arsenic into Salvarsan, a famous syphilis treatment which was used with some efficacy for years until the discovery of penicillin. Mercury, the highly toxic heavy metal, was also used to heal the genitals of unfortunate NOLA denizens, usually in the form of ointment or pills for syphilis sores. It was also found in gum powders formulated to help teething babies—because what parent wouldn’t want to rub a neurotoxin into their child’s mouth? Another toxic heavy metal, lead, also made the cut. Lead oxide was the remedy of choice for boils and skin ulcers for centuries, while lead acetate was used to treat tuberculosis. Some pharmacists took the party to the next level and used a combination of lead acetate and opium as a solution for loose bowels...not exactly Imodium. Side Effects: Heavy metal poisoning causes abdominal cramping, vomiting, shortness of breath, tingling hands and feet, paralysis, dementia, infertility, anemia, seizures, coma, insanity, and death.
A syphilitic man, wife, and mistress, being treated via mercury pills
LEECHES
When you live in a swamp one thing abundantly available is leeches. In pharmacies, they even got their own fancypants porcelain jar! Moreover, compared to some of the crazy shit early medical pros were using on people, those wriggling buggers were actually one of the most effective and least dangerous therapeutic interventions a patient could hope to receive. Because leeches secrete anticoagulants—blood thinners—via saliva into whomever they’re latched on to, they’ve used as a cheap and low-risk treatment for blood clots. In early New Orleans, they were also used to treat infections and neurological fits believed to be caused by “an excess of blood.” Some practitioners used them to bring down localized swelling in cases like tonsillitis and hemorrhoids...yes, leeches for hemorrhoids. Side Effects: Oozing and potentially deadly bacterial infections from tainted leeches; having a leech dangling from your swollen anus.
Casual Leeches
Blood Letting
Speaking of “an excess of blood,” we used to blame a LOT of health problems on the theory a person could have too much blood in their body, or too much “bad blood.” Since the fifth century, people all over the world have tried to solve infections, fevers, and emotional issues like hysteria by opening veins and hoping the fever would run out of the body. Unfortunately, that’s not how blood or infections work, at all, and overzealous blood-letters could easily bleed an already ailing patient to death—like the time doctors pulled around 3.75 LITERS, more than half the blood in the entire human body, out of founding father George Washington as he lay struggling with an upper respiratory infection. (That intervention was...um...not effective, PS. Washington died.) Anyway, bloodletting didn’t happen in the pharmacy itself, but the shop was a place that could stock a variety of sharp, weird, Saw II looking devices used to puncture veins and control blood flow. Side Effects: Fainting, anemia, infection from rusted or unclean tools, bleeding to death even if you’re the President.
Bloodletting
Opium
One of the most potent pain killers eeeeeeever, it’s not been hard to understand why opium has had such staying power throughout medical history. A vital part of battlefield medicine during the Civil War—you really, REALLY didn’t want to have a limb amputated or take a bullet without it—the substance was a boon for healers and the recently mauled alike. Moreover, because of its constipating effects, opium was a reliable aid for common illnesses where explosive diarrhea could become deadly, including cholera and dysentery. Patients suffering from racking coughs or severe insomnia may have been prescribed remedies with small quantities of opium mixed in, and those with anxiety attacks or severe depression found getting wrecked on opium—the most potent narcotic on the market at that time—to be a pretty satisfactory alternative to talking about their feelings. Unfortunately, just like today, addiction was a serious problem. Physicians using opium to treat mood disorders often noted that some depressed patients became verbally abusive while on it, and withdrawals (chills, grey face, uncontrollable sweating, tremors, delirium, vomiting, searing nerve pain, etc.) could be worse than the illness it was initially prescribed to treat. It is estimated that around 200,000 opium addicts lived in the United States during the 19th century, a number that seems almost adorably tiny compared to the millions of opiate addicts modern medicine has managed to create in the last few decades. Side Effects: Nausea, vomiting, weight loss, agonizing constipation not received by enemas, sedation, impotence, inability to orgasm, heart attack, respiratory arrest, death.
Opium and Cocaine
Cocaine
If there’s one “wonder drug” medical professionals loved the most, cocaine was it for a while...and not just because it made early settlers feels like Scarface. Cocaine was a highly effective analgesic (a numbing agent) and stimulant and made a variety of surgeries and medical procedures easier to execute AND survive. Just a few drops of cocaine solution could paralyze and numb an eyeball entirely, making ocular surgery pain free for the first time. Sinus surgery, removing adenoids or tonsils, and oral surgery all benefited greatly from the advent of cocaine, and patients loved not having their body cut into with scalpels while they could feel it. As of 1900, New Orleanians could walk into the pharmacy and grab a gram of pure cocaine for $0.25, using it to numb tooth pain, boost mood, or stay awake. Some parents used it to treat “shyness” in children. Medical professionals often likened it to coffee or tea and scoffed at its addictive risks. By the 20th century, cocaine was one of the Top 5 best selling pharmaceuticals in the nation, with coke-laced sodas, cigars, snuff powders, and injections readily available. Some heavy housewives and portly gentlemen even used it as an appetite suppressant, making cocaine one of our earliest “diet pills.” You know how this story ends, of course—addiction, tragedy, and eventual government regulation. Not surprisingly, a large number of our early coke addicts ended up being doctors and pharmacists, which may explain our long medical tradition of docs talking relentlessly and not being able to listen for more than 7 seconds without interrupting. Side Effects: Racing heartbeat, heart attack, clenched jaws, insomnia, mania, psychosis, renal disease, death, and writing 46-minute jazz songs with no melody.
Visitors with bent minds and an interest in medical macabre can get a glimpse of bottles, boxes, needles, implements, and all kinds of odd medical paraphernalia by visiting the Pharmacy Museum itself. To learn more about some of our city’s dark history of plagues, medical abuse, and turning poor patients into very bitter ghosts, book a tour with Hottest Hell, and subscribe to our newsletter for weekly blog updates.