Search results
Sep 1, 2010 · See the video in its entirety at http://bit.ly/YellowFever In 1793, the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia led to a new era of public health in America. This video goes...
- 46 sec
- 14K
- ADVANCE Healthcare Network
Nov 16, 2022 · In September 1793, yellow fever continued to ravage Philadelphia. As the death toll mounted, Dr. Benjamin Rush raced to find a cure. Rush used an aggressive ...
- 43 min
- 2.3K
- Wondery
It’s 1793 and your skin and eyes turn yellow while you feel feverish. Those around you know there’s not much that they can do because they’ve seen hundreds o...
- 7 min
- 6.8K
- Founders Club
The first major American yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia in July 1793 and peaked during the first weeks of October. Philadelphia, then the nation’s capital, was the most cosmopolitan city in the United States.
The Yellow Fever Epidemic. In 1793, Philadelphia was struck with the worst outbreak of Yellow Fever ever recorded in North America. The fever took a devastating toll on the city as nearly 5,000 individuals died, among them close to 400 African Americans.
- Debate Over Yellow Fever's Causes
- The Well-To-Do Exit The City
- Controversial Treatment Methods
- Philadelphia's Free Black Community Care For The Sick
At the time, no one knew what caused yellow fever, or how it spread. Some thought it had been brought to Philadelphia by a ship bearing French refugees from a slave rebellion in Santo Domingo (now Haiti). Others—including the city’s leading physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush—believed it originated in the poor sanitary conditions and contaminated air of t...
Those who had the means to leave the city quickly did so, including Jefferson himself. President George Washington, who returned to his beloved Mount Vernon estate, blamed his exiton the concerns of his wife, Martha. Alexander Hamiltoncontracted yellow fever early in the epidemic, and he and his family left the city for their summer home a few mile...
Despite all his efforts, Rush had just a flawed understanding of yellow fever as anyone else at the time. His undeniably harsh treatments—including bloodletting, “Mercurial Sweating Powder,” and forced vomiting—did not curb the spread of the disease, and critics argued it only increased his patients’ suffering. These critics included Hamilton, who ...
"Parents desert their children as soon as they are infected, and in every room you enter you see no person but a solitary black man or woman near the sick,” Rush wrote to his wife, Julia, who was in Princeton, New Jersey, with the couple’s children, during the 1793 epidemic. “Many people thrust their parents into the street as soon as they complain...
Between August 1 and November 9, 1793, approximately 11,000 people contracted yellow fever in the US capital of Philadelphia. Of that number, 5,000 people, 10 percent of the city’s population, died. The disease gets its name from the jaundiced eyes and skin of the victims.
