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May 28, 2020 · The 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic: The Washingtons, Hamilton and Jefferson. May 28, 2020. Posted by: Neely Tucker. This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division. Martha Washington, in an unfinished portrait by Gilbert Stuart. Theodor Horydczak Collection. Prints and Photographs Division.
- 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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Mar 26, 2020 · Here are nine important observations on the 1793 outbreak, some of which may ring familiar today. 1. People Stopped Shaking Hands. Unaware that mosquitoes spread yellow fever, Americans feared contact with the sick or unwitting carriers. In their fear of contagion, Americans abandoned the custom of shaking hands.
Curated features. About. The Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia, 1793. Yellow fever is known for bringing on a characteristic yellow tinge to the eyes and skin, and for the terrible “black vomit” caused by bleeding into the stomach.
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.
Mar 3, 2021 · Scholars at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History recently revisited that 1793 outbreak in the online seminar, “Race and Place: Yellow Fever and the Free African Society in ...
