The surprise at the Stansbury House

This weekend I was honored to attend a beautiful wedding in Chico hosted at a location called the Stansbury House.

While roaming around the house museum, I was amazed at the history of medicine that was hiding within the historical articles.

The Stansbury house was built by Dr. Oscar Stansbury in 1883.

He was one of the first physicians to arrive when the town of Chico was only 3 years old. Because there was no hospital, he had a room built in his home to treat patients, often travelled to patients homes in his carriage, and worked out of the courthouse building to meet the demand of the times.

Within his extensive collection of medical texts - there were countless of books about different aspects of the body, diseases and surprisingly for those times - the importance of hygiene in preventing disease.

Medical anthropology has always been a deep interest of mine and I never thought I would find such deep history of this in the cute little town of Chico.

Dr. Oscar Stansbury’s collection of medical equipment was amazing - within his shelves there were glass cupping cups that were used in that time for an ancient form of cupping called Hijama - a practice originating back to the middle east and ancient Egyptians among others which is still practiced in some parts of the world today.

Such an important reminder that cupping has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years practiced even by traditional physicians.

I highly encourage anyone visiting Chico to make a quick stop at the Stansbury house. Such a gem of history to see.

-Mayeelin