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Lecturer Looks at Connection Between 1918 Flu and WWI

Nov 06th, 2018

In conjunction with the centennial of the end of World War I and the Geneva Historical Society's current exhibit, A Changing World: Geneva and World War I, the Historical Society's Fall Lecture Series features programs about the war. The final lecture in the series is on Tuesday, November 27 at 7 p.m. Finger Lakes Community College Professor of History Robert Brown will present “The Perfect Storm: WWI and the Flu Pandemic of 1918.”
 
Dr. Brown will examine the largely overlooked relationship between the Great War of 1914-18 and the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918. He will focus on how the First World War created the ideal conditions for a pandemic situation to emerge in 1918 and how, in turn, the unprecedented sickness and mortality generated by the flu adversely impacted the conduct of the war.
 
Dr. Robert Brown is Professor of History at SUNY Finger Lakes Community College, where he has taught since 2003. He is also former Research Associate at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. He has published numerous articles on the subject of the flu pandemic of 1918 and contributed to the PBS documentary Secrets of the Dead: Killer Flu. He is currently at work on the book Fatal Alliance: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Great War. He has a Ph.D. from Syracuse University.
 
This lecture is supported in part by the Samuel B. Williams fund for programs in the Humanities and is free and open to the public. For more information about the program, call the Geneva Historical Society office at 315-789-5151. The Geneva History Museum is located in the Prouty-Chew House at 543 South Main Street, Geneva, NY. Parking is on the street or in the Trinity Episcopal Church lot across the street.
 

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