When anyone steps down into a cellar or basement in Hawaii, it is most likely a brand-new experience. We don’t have those cool underground spaces here that are found just about everywhere on the mainland.

The cellar at the Hawaiian Mission Houses on South King Street is cool in two senses: the temperature, yes, but what you will see and experience — among many nifty specimens in a new exhibit there — are pills made partially with poi, medicine bottles covered with pig bladder, big glass jugs called demijohns and many more unique items you can’t help but find cool.

It is a two-part exhibit that was a year and a half in the making. On the one hand are material objects exhibited in the depository that show how the missionaries worked and lived — without salaries. Imagine that in today’s world. It was called the common stock system. The other part is a careful re-creation of Dr. Gerrit Judd’s dispensatory, or what we would call a medical clinic today.

Judd’s basement medicine in the 1830s was far different from what you find in your doctor’s office today. Everywhere you look in the exhibit are faithful details of how he integrated Western medical practices of that day with medicines the Native Hawaiians had used for eons. About the poi: It was used as a binder to make pills from medicines that Judd imported from the mainland.

Malcolm Chun, author and kahuna, confirmed for the museum, through his reports and books, that Judd was open-minded and pragmatic when it came to combining Western and native cures for the benefit of his patients. Judd also employed Hawaiians as his assistants. It is well documented that he wanted to train Hawaiians; he also wanted to learn from them; and he wanted to work with them. That is the real story. It is a story of collaboration.

How did both sections of the basement exhibit — the depository and the dispensatory — gain such authenticity? That clue is actually in the museum’s name: Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site and Archives. The museum’s thousands of collected documents, letters, ledgers, objects and the like revealed incredible details of the missionaries’ lives and their work.

Mike Smola, the museum’s talented curator of programs, pored deeply through the archives to fill in gaps around objects that were already in the museum’s collection — like Judd’s handsome wood desk and rows of medicine bottles with actual labels. He did find information on what the crude instrument that was used for constipation looked like as well as the good doctor’s examining room layout and much, much more.

This information was turned over to a mainland expert by the name of Mary Seelhorst, who worked with glass blowers, tinsmiths, carvers, weavers and many others (all heritage craftworkers) to replicate an array of medical material objects as well as the cloth, slate tablets, demijohns, pencils, hogsheads, door hinges, pepper shakers and furniture that were eventually sent out to the various missions in all corners of the islands.

Tom Woods, the museum’s learned and genial executive director, oversaw it all. He also was helped by Craig Schneider, curator of object collections, who joined the museum a few months ago from the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.

Schneider’s background added another layer of gloss to the exhibit such as providing the design for the original 1830s pill-making machine. In the exhibit you will see a replica of this device that was used to make the pills with poi as a binder.

Woods describes the common stock system as "a community-based economic system designed to enable the missionaries to accomplish their goals without having to worry about finding sustenance and shelter." Everything they needed to live and work was provided out of the basement depository under the stern eye of Levi Chamberlain, apparently a meticulous record-keeper.

Woods says Chamberlain kept track of everything that came off the boats, went down those steps to the basement as inventory, and then again came back up to be shipped to the various mission stations as requested.

You will thoroughly enjoy taking the coral steps down to the basement of the 1821 frame house at 533 S. King St. to relive early island medicine and see what kept the missionaries fed, clothed and housed. A tour with a docent of the new exhibit and the frame house costs $8 (kamaaina), kids 6-13 $4. It is open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

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ON THE NET:
» missionhouses.org

Keep Hawaii Hawaii is a monthly column on island architecture and urban planning. Robert M. Fox, president of Fox Hawaii Inc., studied architecture in California and Japan. He was one of the founders of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation in 1974. David Cheever, owner of David Cheever Marketing, has served on the boards of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation and the Hawaii Architectural Foundation. Send comments to keephawaiihawaii@staradvertiser.com.