Today I had the opportunity to go and tour the famous St. Louis cathedral. I learned so much about catholicism that I did not know before that I had a wonderful learning opportunity. The cathedral was so beautiful and had so many beautiful paintings and stories about all of the hardships that the church had been through. For example, they have had to rebuild the cathedral many times due to catastrophes. When the great fire of New Orleans happened, the priest frantically was throwing records into the streets to try and keep them from burning, as well as rescuing many different artifacts, such as the baptismal, the hung up paintings, and the gifts of Christ. While the fire wreaked havoc on New Orleans and the church, the Ursalines prayed with the Sweetheart statue, and miraculously the winds changed and diverted the fires away from the Convent. It was so cool how the Ursalines were able to pray for the fire so stop before it burned down the Convent. In the church at the Convent, there was a monstrance that was made of gold and covered with precious stone. When the story was told to us, I was surprised to learn that the monstrance was funded by the people of New Orleans. The priest asked people of New Orleans if they had any gold jewelry or precious stones that they wanted to donate to the church to help make the monstrance. It was so cool to hear how the people of New Orleans came together to donate their own personal jewelry to make this beautiful monstrance for the church.
View of St. Louis Cathedral from inside.
Inner Journey
One of the best experiences that I had today was going to the New Orleans pharmacy museum. I found it so neat to be able to see how people practiced medicine in the 1800s and 1900s. From the way they made pills, gave injections, and the lack of dosage control. How medicine was described during this time was that the medicine that you were given was to make you forget about your old disease and present you with a new one to distract you, or in many cases the medicine that you took was going to make you die quicker than your presenting illness. Especially being in the medical field, it made me realize how much practice has changed, and how much it could change in just a short amount of time. I found this exhibit and all of the artifacts so interesting that I almost didn't want to leave! All of their artifacts were original, and all of the substances in the glass jars that were displayed was all original! It was so different to hear how medicine was practice and all of the different tools that was used. I also found it interesting to hear how little people knew about diseases and medicine. Anyone at this time could practice medicine, but there was only one licensed pharmacist in New Orleans, which also made him the first licensed pharmacist in the country, and the only licensed pharmacy that was in practice. Of course the materials that they had at that time made it difficult for them to study disease and illness, but some how medicine came to be what it is today, and it made me so fascinated to learn about a different time of medicine and illness.
Inside of the Pharmacy museum, everything in the bottles is original.
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