The pathology of a building

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The pathology of a building
by Paul F. P. Pogue Apr 21, 2004

Medical History Museum compelling 109 years later

In 1902, little Ralph Edenharter, son of Dr. George Edenharter, superintendent of the Central State Hospital, hid a letter and some photos in the walls of the then-new Pathological Department Building. His note to the future remained there for 72 years before being discovered.

Virginia Terpening, executive director of the Indiana Medical History Museum, examines the record books where autopsy results were inscribed for decades.

Now, in 2004, that bit of odd trivia jumping across decades is but one example of the stories that dot the site of the Old Pathology Building, the last remnant of Central State, in what is currently the Indiana Medical History Museum, 3045 W. Vermont St. “It’s a combination of human and science stories,” said Virginia Terpening, executive director of the museum. “It’s science in a context, rather than in a textbook. I learn something here every day.” The first stop for tour groups through the site is a lecture in the amphitheater. People sit in the same sturdy wooden chairs medical residents used in 1895 when they attended classes and viewed dissections. It’s like a scene from a Victorian-era movie, perfectly preserved 109 years later. Even now the building has not fully given up its secrets. Terpening and her staff are seemingly studying the pathology of the building itself — carrying out a careful and continual autopsy. “We’re still learning things about this,” Terpening said. “We put two and two together and hope we get four.” The museum is a definite hands-on experience, where one can look through vintage microscopes and large-format glass negatives of cell structures studied and photographed by the hospital’s enormous microscope camera. In their time, the staff here strove to do everything on-site, and so you can find nearly anything necessary to medical study of the time. Perhaps most fascinating is the autopsy room, where doctors wore thick aprons and wielded the most intimidating tools imaginable. They dictated their findings into a tube connected to the records room upstairs, where an assistant dutifully transcribed notes into one of the enormous books that recorded the hospital’s painstaking research. In a time where germ theory was not yet fully understood, the work made tuberculosis a near inevitability, but they did it anyway. “You balance the personal satisfaction and fulfillment you get from the job, against the potential risk,” Terpening said. The museum will not be alone on the site much longer, as the city will soon be moving the Police Department’s horse stables there. Additional uses for the site are also being considered. Terpening hopes to add more gallery space for exhibits not specifically tied to Central State. Outside, master gardeners donate their labor and resources for a historically accurate medicinal garden. The museum struggles with the financial burden of being a not-for-profit primarily funded by the $5 fee for tour groups. “Even doctors assume we get money,” Terpening said. “Everybody else assumes the doctors give us money. And the overarching assumption is that Lilly gives us money.” The museum also bears a reputation for being haunted after being listed in Haunted Indiana 3 and showing up on some hauntings Web sites. It’s an eternal thorn in the side of the staff. “It’s not a normal historical building — I mean, we have brains here — but it’s not haunted,” Terpening said. Anyone coming here looking for ghosts is missing the point anyway. It is not haunted, but it is haunting. The spirit of this place is not in things that go bump in the night, but in the memories of the work real people did here. In the dawning age of psychiatry, they studied, they probed, they questioned. It was dirty work, wet and squishy and potentially fatal, but they did it anyway, meticulously recording their findings in precise analytical terms that remain perfectly clear to physicians a century later. A 1910 quote from Daniel Burnham is emblazoned on the suggested revitalization plan for the Central State area. “Make no little plans … let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.”

For more information: • Museum site: www.imhm.org • Central State land use study by Ball State: www.centralstatestudy.org • MHM is also the location for a site-specific theater performance by Butler University.

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