A Short Account of the Malignant Fever, Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia:

CAREY, Mathew. A Short Account of the Malignant Fever, Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia: with a Statement of the Proceedings that took Place on the Subject in Different Parts of the United States. To Which Is Added, Accounts of the Plague in London and Marseilles; and a List of the Dead, from August 1, to the Middle of December, 1793.

Phila.: Printed by the Author, January 16, 1794. 4th ed., improved. In the first three editions of this book, Carey made numerous racist comments regarding the supposed immunity of blacks to the yellow fever and, more importantly, accusations that blacks were profiteering during the epidemic. Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, ministers and leaders of the black community, had provided strong rebuttals of these points, and Carey revised the book in response to their criticisms.

This is the first edition after the revisions were made. "One of the foremost American publishers of the late 18th- and early 19th-centuries, Carey was also a prolific author, among whose works is this first-hand account of the yellow fever epidemic which claimed the lives of more than 4,000 Philadelphians between August and November 1793.... The author's account of the epidemic's effect on daily life--the cessation of commerce, the interruption of political activity, and the dissolution of bonds among friends and within families--is reminiscent of passages from Boccaccio, Defoe or Manzoni" (annotation to Miner 80, the 1st ed.).

Includes David Rittenhouse's meteorological charts, list of all burials by date and religions, and list of all the dead by name and profession.

From Catalog I

The "improved" fourth edition is the first to incorporate revisions responding to the Jones-Allen rebuttal, and the first to include David Rittenhouse's meteorological charts and the full list of the dead by name and profession -- more than four thousand names. Both Rush's localists and Currie's importationists cited Rittenhouse's data, reading the same numbers in opposite directions.