My research focused on the question: What can be learned about 19th century Middle Eastern and European medical practices from the personal diaries of Joseph Mattia Svoboda, a European resident in Iraq from 1860 to 1908? Joseph Mattia Svoboda’s diaries document a very detailed account of daily life and information in the Basra and Baghdad regions of modern day Iraq. Joseph himself suffered from a chronic gastrointestinal disease and frequently wrote about the medication prescribed to him by doctors and self-selected which he then self-administered. I used this information as a basis to piece together common medical practices and medications utilized in the 19th century. Using digital transcriptions of the diaries, I used data-mining techniques to extract references to medicines, doses, and usages. Then, using contemporary European newspapers, medical journals, advertisements, and historical records I traced these medicines and their ingredients back to their origin. I examined modern research on these medicines’ ingredients to look at the effect these medicines had on the body compared to the expected results of the time period. I found the medicinal practices of the time, especially in relation to patent medicines generally stem from Europe with many medications being produced and sold there. This allowed me to identify some of the ingredients and usages. However, some of the ingredients and medications were not native to Europe, indicating a larger trade system and medical practices from around the globe influencing medicine in Iraq. Future projects stemming from my research could look into the influence of Asian, Middle Eastern, and Native American herbalism and indigenous practices on 19th century medical practices and medicine trade. Regardless, I hope my work encourages others to explore beyond the eurocentric narrative of developing medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Based on the Newbook Digital Texts: Joseph Mathia Svoboda Diaries, I expect to answer the question of how the route of the Tigris River traveled by Joseph, a man of Eastern European decent living in the Ottoman Empire in the last half of the 19th century, has changed in the last 100 years. The Svoboda Diaries provide an insight into life and travel in the Middle East. They contian the documentation of Joseph's travels in current day Iraq, detailing villages and towns passed on his regular routes. The purpose of this research is to show that some major changes in the river are due to economically and politically motivated policies made to control sections of the river. I hypothesize that economic and social policies since Joseph's time have impacted the river today. In my research, I use mapping software to visualize changes in modern-day Iraq. Through the program StoryMap, I highlight locations along the river and compare it today. Using maps from the late 19th century I will track changes and display them in comparison to an up-to-date map. Newbook currently has a few maps available, although I also plan on using articles from their past interns, one in particular that focuses on Hydraulic Policy in Iraq. Additionally, I will look for other maps available from the Library of Congress. Through my research, I expect to find changes in major dam projects, canals and irrigation projects as well as groups of people and tribes dislocated by changes to the river.

Drumlin formation in the Puget Lowland occurs at varying scales ranging from tens of meters to a few kilometers both in length and width. There is no unifying theory to explain drumlin formation, but Boulton (1987) contends that drumlin features comprised of stratified sediment overlain by till, such as those observed in the Puget Lowland, are formed by differential erosion and deposition of a heterogenous, deformable bed. According to Boulton’s model, deformable sediment under high ice-pressure, coupled with high pore water pressure, flows around cores of less-deformable sediment. As pressure around the obstruction (i.e. less deformable sediment) increases from the converging ice, the ice starts to erode and deform. Deposition occurs where pore water can drain from the bed, such as into permeable outwash. Till would then accrete incrementally, increasing the drumlins height and length over its development history. Drumlinoid features bisected by wave erosion and channel incision on Whidbey Island provide an excellent opportunity to empirically quantify the thickness of till deposition in relation to position on the drumlin, as well as the underlying sedimentological properties of the substrate units underlying the till. Numerous well logs recorded on drumlinoid features complement the field measurements. A detailed assessment of the drumlin’s substrate geology, specifically the thickness of the overlying till will provide important quantitative data relevant to assessing the validity of Boulton’s model to explain the formation of larger-scale drumlinoid features in the Puget Lowland.