Days of Dread: Knoxville's Historic Epidemics Lecture

Blount Mansion
Event Location: 
Blount Mansion
When: 
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 12:30pm

In many cases, fact is more frightening than fiction. That’s especially true of the countless disease epidemics which racked our community in past centuries. While the illnesses themselves would be unimaginable in today’s times, the treatments—such as bleeding, blistering, and purging—were frequently just as bad.

On Thursday evening, Oct. 24 at Blount Mansion, Laura Still, well-known historic tour guide and author of the best-selling book A Haunted History of Knoxville, will present her recently completed research into the shocking sicknesses that felled hundreds of our citizens over the years. Included are the mosquito-borne fevers that claimed the lives of Knoxvillians like William Blount, the mid-19th century cholera outbreaks that sickened entire neighborhoods, and the murderous flu of 1918.

The information will be presented in an engaging, relatable manner that will make the past come alive for history lovers and non-historians alike, delivered in the same style that makes Still’s walking tours of downtown Knoxville so popular.

This program will begin with a light reception at 5:30 p.m., followed by Ms. Still’s lecture at 6:00 p.m. Both the reception and lecture will take place in the Blount Mansion Visitors Center at 200 W. Hill Ave., and admission is $5 per person.

More information is available online at www.blountmansion.org.

Free parking is available at the Blount Mansion Visitors Center and in the Dwight Kessel Garage across the street.