~This is the fourth of four guest posts from a class taught by Tom Ewing at Virginia Tech in fall 2017. Read the other parts here: I, II, III. We are grateful to Professor Ewing and his students for sharing their wonderful work with us and allowing us to share it with our readers. On October 2, 1918, the city of Boston recorded 188 deaths from influenza, the highest daily toll during the epidemic. [1] Just one day… Continue reading

~This is the third of four guest posts from a class taught by Tom Ewing at Virginia Tech in fall 2017. Read the other parts here: I and II. The state medical journals can be analyzed using tools and methods from the digital humanities and data analytics to provide unique insights into the historical significance of the 1918 Spanish Influenza. These methods include term frequency, text visualizations, and network analysis of term collocations. The tools… Continue reading

~This is the second of four guest posts from a class taught by Tom Ewing at Virginia Tech in fall 2017. Read the other parts here: I and III. Students enrolled in Virginia Tech’s course, Introduction to Data in Social Context, in fall 2017 were assigned a group project requiring them to complete a case study of a single state during the Spanish influenza using a variety of primary sources. (1) Six states were selected for… Continue reading

~This is the first of four guest posts from a class taught by Tom Ewing at Virginia Tech in fall 2017. Read the other posts here: II and III. The Spanish Influenza of 1918 demonstrates the unique scholarly value of the state medical journal collection from the Medical Heritage Library (link). The Spanish flu affected the entire United States (as well as the world) in ways that challenged the current state of medical knowledge, required… Continue reading