Historical society hosts program

SHARON — On Saturday, February 16 at 2 pm the Sharon Historical Society & Museum will host a free public guided tour of their new three room exhibit, “Sharon Cures: Centuries of Medicine in One Small Town,” with co-curators Marge Smith and Susan Shepard. Following the tour, guests are invited to hear and share recollections of local legend, the spitfire country doctor Josephine Evarts who practiced in Sharon and surrounding towns from 1929 to 1979.

The exhibit reveals the history of medicine in Sharon from 1738 when the town was founded in the unsettled part of colonial Connecticut to today’s Sharon Hospital in words, photos, and objects from the 18thh century through today. Visitors can learn about the very first doctors and their methods. The stunning but little known story of Sharon fighting its way through a small pox epidemic in 1784 using controversial small pox inoculations is told in documents and illustrations. An 1830’s doctor’s ledger of his daily calls and patient treatments is on display. Dr. William Coley, now recognized as the Father of Cancer Immunotherapy, was a Sharon resident. Contents of the 1900 medical bag of Sharon Hospital’s founder, Dr. Jerome Chaffee, are on display along with common quack medicines that people were using and doctors were fighting against. Today, the medical industry is the largest employer in Sharon, but the story of its evolution has never been told before in one place.

Smith and Shepard, awardwinning curators and area historians, developed the exhibit from the Sharon Historical Society collections, extensive research in original town documents and with advice from Connecticut medical specialists.

The Sharon Historical Society & Museum is located at 18 Main Street, Sharon. For information, call 860-364-5688, visit www.sharonhist.org or the Sharon Historical Society on Facebook.