New exhibit traces the evolution of medicine in Medina County

As part of America’s 250th anniversary, the Medina County Historical Society has created an interactive exhibit illustrating how medical treatment progressed in the county from the early 1800s to the present day.

The exhibit will open at the John Smart House on Sunday, March 8, and continue on the second Sunday of every month from 1-4 p.m. Admission is $5 and free for families with a fourth-grade student. The museum is located at 206 N. Elmwood Ave. in Medina.

The McDowell-Phillips House museum also will be open on the same Sundays, allowing visitors to tour both Medina County Historical Society museums in one day.

Dr. Linn Mast, a society trustee, and board President Brian Feron worked with a small committee since October to create the exhibit. Mast spent more than 30 years treating patients and was the first ophthalmologist in Medina.

The display includes items from Mast’s practice, such as optical examination equipment and early eyeglasses. He demonstrated an early mobile phone the size of a small suitcase that he used to answer patient calls. “It was a marvel. Before that, I had a pager and had to find a phone booth. This was replaced with a cell phone,” he said.

Some items were previously donated to the museum, and others were loaned from the Lodi and Wadsworth historical societies. Lodi Community Hospital opened in 1920, followed by Wadsworth Municipal Hospital in 1921. Medina Community Hospital, which opened in 1944, became part of the Cleveland Clinic in 2009. The clinic donated medical items from the old hospital’s archives, and a former nurse donated a scale used to weigh babies there in the 1940s. The exhibit also includes items from Dr. R. Lynn Mansell, the hospital’s first chief of staff.

A skeleton, microscopes, medical bags, an examination table and information about the county’s polio epidemic are included. An aged, large book from a Medina pharmacy contains hundreds of prescriptions.

Photographs of many physicians who practiced in Medina County are on display. Visitors can watch videotaped interviews with 14 physicians describing their experiences and how medical practices changed over the years. Mast said one of those interviewed is Dr. Bijay Jayaswal, the first cardiologist in Medina to insert a pacemaker.

Feron pointed to a large medical history timeline on the wall showing milestones in Medina, Lodi and Wadsworth, along with national events. “It helps you recognize the quality of medical care we have, compared to what was available in the past,” he said.

Mast agreed. “In 1921, before insulin was available, being diagnosed with diabetes was a death sentence. Before penicillin became available in the 1940s, you had a good chance of dying of pneumonia,” he said.

He added, “There is a common thread through all of this. Doctors of our past and today are people treating people, not disease.”