The Province of Affliction: Illness and the Making of Early New England

Ben Mutschler, Oregon State University, in conversation with Liz Covart, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture

Afflictions of all sorts coursed through eighteenth-century New England – towns and cities set ablaze by epidemics, soldiers sickened and injured in the fight for empire, families and households laboring under an astonishing range of sufferings that were at once common and costly. This session will bring Ben Mutschler, author of The Province of Affliction: Illness and the Making of Early New England (Chicago, 2020), together with Liz Covart, host of the podcast Ben Franklin’s World, to discuss how the early modern world addressed issues at once strange and familiar to us all.