Old Death Records Illuminate Critical Period

By Kelly Wilkinson

Amherst, MA – A professor at the University of Massachusetts won a 3-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to study what he calls the "Grammars of Death." He'll led a team studying old death records in two Western Massachusetts towns. As WAMC's Berkshire Bureau Chief Kelly Wilkinson explains, its hoped that the study will shed some light on a time period when medical and social views of death and disease changed radically.