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May 28, 2020 · Between 1793 and 1805, waves of yellow fever attacked northern ports in the U.S. Then the disease retreated south, where it persisted through the end of the 19th century. At the turn of the 20th century, a time of great advances in bacteriology, scientists discovered that yellow fever was transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito.
- 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...
- Sarah Pruitt
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About. “An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793” dramatically recounts the true story of the yellow fever epidemic that nearly decimated the population of Philadelphia at the end of the 18th century.
During the 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 5,000 or more people were listed in the register of deaths between August 1 and November 9. The vast majority of them died of yellow fever, making the epidemic in the city of 50,000 people one of the most severe in United States history.
An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 | ALA. ALA. An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. by Jim Murphy (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Company)
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.
