Come to the Oklahoma Territorial Museum and Carnegie Library for a lecture on the history of territorial medicine with PhD student Ben Folger. Folger will be presenting his research on medical frontiers in Oklahoma, their relation to the history of tribal medicine, and the professionalization of medicine.

Ben Folger is a first-year PhD student studying the history of medicine in the American West. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2022, earning his MA with his thesis entitled, “‘A Great Mass of Incompetent Men’: Contested Medical Frontiers in Oklahoma, 1880–1940,” which examined trends in the professionalization of medicine in Oklahoma. Folger looks to continue exploring the relationship between Colonial-era violence and histories of medicine in the American West in his doctoral work.

The lecture is free to the public.