Valley City State University senior Tim Eppen, a history and social science major interning at the Barnes County Historical Society Museum, tries out a turn-of-the-century “Home Medical Apparatus with Dry Battery,” sold for vision improvement and other health benefits. The apparatus was donated to the museum by Valley City High School teacher Carol Foth. (Steve Browne/VCTR) 

By Steve Browne
Valley City Times-Record

The Barnes County Historical Society Museum is hosting a traveling ophthalmology exhibit, and has found a way to save money by using technology.
“To Fool the Eye” is an ophthalmic history exhibit created by the Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Opthalmic Heritage and Museum of Vision, San Francisco, Calif.
The exhibit includes displays of ads for many medicines and devices sold to cure poor eyesight during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Included is a discussion about medical fads such as patent medicines, electric shock, and eye exercises that were advertised as cure-alls for eye problems, which demonstrate both the humor and serious nature of quack medicine.
Medical quackery is the practice of aggressively promoting an unproven medical treatment. Although some purveyors of quackery were fraudulent practitioners, many were simply misinformed and genuinely believed in their claims.
Two-way shipping for the exhibit's display posters and equipment would have cost hundreds of dollars, according to museum curator Wes Anderson.
“Rather than send the whole exhibit from California, they sent us the disk with all the information. Kadrmas, Lee and Jackson printed them, Prairie Frame Shop mounted them, and by a happy coincidence we had the medical equipment here,” Anderson said.
One piece of turn-of-the-century equipment is the “Home Medical Apparatus with Dry Battery.” The exhibit included an advertisement for the device, and the museum actually had one on hand, donated in 2001 by high school art teacher Carol Foth.

For full story, see Wednesday's edition of the Valley City Times-Record.