The Pest House Medical Museum

Lynchburg’s first “hospital,” the Pest (as in pestilence) House was in actuality a quarantine house where people with contagious diseases would be placed away from the population. Most of the people who entered the Pest House didn’t leave, which is evident by the graveyard that surrounds the house. The poor conditions of the Pest House were ameliorated by Dr. John Jay Terrell, and today you can see the Pest House just as it was in the mid-1800s when Dr. Terrell successfully treated civil war veterans there. Be sure to see the “poison chest.”