Vicki Daniel, PhD
Instructor, College of Arts and Sciences
Case Western Reserve University
Abstract: On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam located in Western Pennsylvania’s Conemaugh Valley failed catastrophically, sending a torrent of water toward the city of Johnstown and killing approximately 2,200 people. In the wake of the flood, officials from the Pennsylvania Board of Health immediately labeled the decomposing human bodies scattered throughout the valley as a massive health threat and established new protocols for protecting the public’s health. At the same time, survivors grieved the dead as beloved friends and neighbors who deserved proper burial and commemoration. For this reason, the Johnstown Flood represents a moment of conflict between the social and medical conceptualizations of the dead in the era of emerging public health paradigms. In this talk, Dr. Daniel will examine the roots of this conflict and analyze how local leaders and state health officials in Johnstown tried to balance between the biological and social imperatives of mass fatality events. She will show how officials deployed public health measures that reflected a compromise between viewing the dead as dangerous material and seeing them as human remains.
CF Reynolds History of Medicine Lecture Series, co-sponsored by the Center for Bioethics & Health Law
Catalog of Opportunities Event
Location and Address
Online