Brief Bio:
Hi everyone! Just to know a little bit about me in my undergrad I was a dual major in History and Geography education with a minor in political science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and graduated last spring. While in my undergraduate at IUP I worked in the university's archive and special collections. There I worked with a variety of collections from western Pennsylvania mining records to University collections. I also studied abroad in the country of Cyprus with the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project. This program allowed me to work with collecting and handling artifacts from the field site, and then we processed them at the local museum while collecting data from the artifacts. During the program we collected artifacts in a primary sweep of the large Mediterranean site. This experience gave me more of a feel for museum archive setting which was a departure from my previous work in an academic archive. Presently, I am working with the Allegheny County Coroner Case Files and very excited to be part of the team.
Working Notes:
1924-1926
When I joined the team we began processing the 1920s cases. I was not sure what I was going to find but I so became interested in the high number of pneumonian. Pneumonia deaths spiked in the winter as to be expected and affected the very young and old. Pneumonia also set in after a person fractured a bone, usually lobar pneumonia. I am trying make a connection between the deceased working environment and the onset of pneumonia. The type of pneumonia that I have been seeing is a very aggressive one with onset of sickness to death being three to six weeks. 9/14/07
1926- 1927
This week I worked with case files in the last 1920s, and I found that there seems to be a large frequency of accident deaths mainly automobile and train accidents. I worked mostly with the spring and summer months so the number of pneumonia deaths went down dramatically. Although I did find more acute alcoholism deaths from accidental falling which was interesting to find in the late 20s. 9/20/07
1927-1928
This week I worked with the case files from 1927 and 1928 I found a lot of accidental deaths and deaths due to Myocarditis. After some research I found that Myocardistis is an inflammation of the heart muscles. Myocarditis does not seem to have an age discrepancy because I found infants, teenagers to seniors all with a cause of death due to an inflammation of the heart muscles. This is interesting to see the new terminology in medicine being used in the coroner case files. The accidental deaths seem to spike in the winter months with a lot of slip and falls and car accidents. 9/26/07
1929-1930
This week I worked with the case files from the months right after the Great Depression and as many of us thought there was a higher number of suicides. A greater number of suicides were men in their 30s and 40s, however i did see some women in the same age range. So with the increased number of suicides we can see the effects of the Great Depression on people living in Allegheny County. Something else that I found interesting was also the deaths by exposure to the cold of the winter months, this mainly affects the elderly which could also been linked back to hardships felt from the Depression. 10/3/07
1930-1931
Throughout this week I continued working with the Depression era coroner case files. I soon realized that our previous notions of people's reaction to the stock market crash was not really internalized until much later, more specifically the winter of 1930. I found an unusually large number of suicides with corresponding notes. Many referenced the idea or feelings of "not having a cent to their name" or actually writing to the undertaker asking them to "dispose of the body like they would for all poor person who don't even have money to die." I most admit that this was one of the most trying weeks on my emotions. I really felt the pain these people must have been going through while struggling through the Depression. Understandably with my background in history I understood the factual events of the Great Depression, however I never contextualized the real pain and struggle until after previewing this selection of suicide notes. These notes made me see the more human side of a Historical event that see so far removed for the fast paced technology driven world of today. 10/13/07
1932-1933
This week I worked on the case files from 1932-1933. In the case files I found a number of deaths from a man jumping off a bridge after being pursued by the police following a hold-up at a local store to a lacerated trachea suicide by swallowing broken glass. 10/19/07
1938-1939
This week I worked on the case files 1938-1939. In this case files I found an overwhelming number of deaths due to Coronary Occlusion with the majority being concentrated in the winter months of 1939. This period also had a number of particularly unusual deaths from being crushed by a wheel was in the city to a murder shooting by a woman because the person stole her shoe money. 10/24/07
1941-1942
This week I worked on the case files from the early 1940s. Some commonalities we found were many deaths from cerebral hemorrhage and coronary occlusion. In addition, we have been seeing an increasing number of anesthesia related deaths during opperations. Atherosclerotic Heart Disease, a new terminology for heart disease, is the changes that occur because of the build up of plaques caused some other deaths or fatty streaks on the interior walls of the blood vessels that supply oxygenated blood to the heart muscle weaken the heart. We have also seen the changing of terminology between differernt cororners themselves.
Comments (1)
Kate Colligan said
at 12:56 pm on Sep 12, 2007
hi alesha- hope you are able to log in now!
Kate
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