The 1793 Yellow Fever
THE first cases appeared in the blocks around Water Street and the wharves in late July and early August, in the narrow streets closest to the river where the summer heat was worst and the air smelled of the cargo that rotted in the August sun. Rush was among the first physicians to recognize what he was seeing. On August 19, he wrote to his wife Julia: "I have seen an unusual number of bilious fevers accompanied by symptoms of uncommon malignity." He had already formed a theory about the cause.
A cargo of coffee from Saint-Domingue had been offloaded onto Ball's Wharf weeks earlier, and part of it had spoiled in the heat and been left to rot on the dock. Rush was convinced he could smell it from several blocks away. It was, he concluded, the miasmatic source — the local atmospheric poison that was generating the fever. This conviction, formed in the first days of the epidemic, would shape everything he did and published for the rest of his life.
The scale of the catastrophe that followed was without precedent in American experience. By September, dozens were dying every day. By October, the death toll was running at a hundred a week. The federal government — Congress, the president, the cabinet — left the city. Most of the College of Physicians' members either fled or retreated into their homes. The courts closed. The markets emptied. Families abandoned the sick in their houses rather than risk infection. The dead carts rattled through silent streets at night.
46 objects in The 1793 Yellow Fever
(Sammelband of 11 pamphlets, by early American physicians and scientists, including several on Yellow Fever and several presentation copies]
(YELLOW FEVER). (BROADSIDE) Lines on the Death of Hilary Baker,
[YELLOW FEVER]. [BARTGIS, Matthias]. NEUER Erfahrner, Amerikanischer, Haus- und Stallarzt, mit den Natürlichsten,
An Account of the Bilious remitting Yellow Fever, as it appeared in the City of Philadelphia, in the Year 1793
Arthur Mervyn
Benjamin Rush ALS August 2, 1798
Benjamin Rush ALS October 17, 1793
Benjamin Rush ALS to Samuel Latham Mitchell
Beschreibung des Gelben Fiebers
A brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases;
Charles Caldwell- Medical and Physical Memoirs
Currie- A treatise on the synochus icteroides
DOUGLASS, William (1691-1752)]. Inoculation of the Small Pox as practised in Boston
An Essay on the Malignant Pestilential Fever
Facts and Observations Relative to the Nature and Origin of the Pestilential Fever,
Facts and observations relative to the nature and origin of the pestilential fever,
History of the pestilence, commonly called yellow fever
An Inquiry into the Various Sources of the Usual Form of Summer & Autumnal Disease in the United States
An Inquiry into the Various Sources of the Usual Form of Summer & Autumnal Disease in the United States
An Inquiry into the Various Sources of the Usual Form of Summer & Autumnal Disease in the United States
LETTER FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
Medical and Physical Memoirs, Containing, Among Other Subjects, A Particular Enquiry into the Origin and Nature of the Late Pestilential Epidemics of the United States
Medical Repository - 1798
A Medical Sketch of the Synchonus Maligna,
Meditations on Yellow Fever
Memoirs of the Yellow Fever
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Committee Appointed on the 14th September 1793
Observations upon the Autumnal Fevers of Savannah
Observations upon the Autumnal Fevers of Savannah
Old Family Letters: Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle
Poulson's Town and Country Almanac for the Year of Our Lord, 1796
Proofs of the origin of the yellow fever
PROOFS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE YELLOW FEVER,
A Semi-Annual Oration, on the Origin of Pestilential Diseases
A Sermon Preached September 20,1793
A Short Account of the Malignant Fever, Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia:
A Short Account of the Malignant Fever, Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia:
A Short Account of the Yellow Fever
Short Account of the Yellow Fever in Philadelphia,
A Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Yellow Fever, and of the Proceedings of the Board of Health, in Philadelphia, in the Year 1799
The Summer of the Pestilence: A History of the Ravages of the Yellow Fever in Norfolk Virginia, A.D. 1855
A Treatise on Malignant Fever; with an Attempt to Prove its Non-contagious Non-Malignant Nature
A Treatise on the Fevers of Jamaica, with Some Observations on the Intermitting Fever of America,
A treatise on the plague and yellow fever
