Simon Finger, MCEAS Consortium Fellow

sfinger@Princeton.EDU

"Epidemic Constitutions: Public Health and Political Culture in the Port of Philadelphia, 1740-1800"

In this project, I explore how notions of health and disease influenced political development in colonial and early national Philadelphia, and how political ideology and conflict shaped the effort to establish a healthy city. The long campaign to promote health, not merely in individual bodies, but among entire populations, raised critical questions about the nature of community: what it would look like, how its economy would be structured, who were its members, what obligations were owed them, and what duties they owed in return.

The dissertation adduces political, medical and cultural sources to go beyond previous conceptions of public-health policy as simply a reaction to threats. Instead, it finds a central role for questions of health and disease in the politics of the Quaker colony, closely linked to broader political goals, and to larger fears about corruption, degeneration, and communal identity.