When printer Mathew Carey published an account of the crisis impugning the conduct of African-American volunteers, black church leaders Absalom Jones and Richard Allen responded by publishing a powerful rebuttal of the charges, forcing Carey to amend later editions of his tract.
The epidemic also set off a wide-ranging debate over the cause of the fever and the best means of controlling it. Incorporating insights from both parties, Pennsylvania established a new Philadelphia Board of Health in to enforce both quarantine and sanitary regulations. Notwithstanding the new measures, the fever returned seven times in the following twelve years, and set the model for how Philadelphians responded to subsequent outbreaks.
Each episode spurred similar patterns of evacuation, isolation, and scapegoating, and stoked the ongoing controversy within the medical community and motivated broader, though futile, efforts to ameliorate the effects of the disease. Nursing may have offered some comfort, but only winter frost—and its extermination of the mosquitoes—brought an end to each fever year. The ordeal of fever had a profound effect on the city and the country.
It inspired literary and journalistic development as writers and printers discussed, described, and debated the disease. The urban nature of the fever fueled the agrarian romanticism of the Jeffersonian era. And throughout the country, and the broader Atlantic World, medical men struggled to understand a foe that thwarted their best efforts. Yellow fever struck Philadelphia and other northern ports only sporadically after , but it remained a persistent problem in the American South until the turn of the century, when researchers like Carlos Finlay and Walter Reed unraveled the etiology of the disease and formulated effective measures to control it.
Map produced by Billy G. Simon Finger holds a Ph. Estes, J. Worth, and Smith, Billy G. Finger, Simon. McNeill, J. Miller, Jacqueline. Powell, J. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, The Pennsylvania Hospital , Spruce St. In some households, family members were banished into the street when they complained of a headache, a common precursor to yellow fever.
Serving the Afflicted Indeed, most of the black residents of Philadelphia remained in the city and helped the stricken white residents. Members of Philadelphia's African Society, who held the common belief that black people were immune to the disease, offered their services to the mayor, fulfilling many responsibilities abandoned by white residents. The mayor would later write of the volunteer effort among black residents: "Their diligence, attention and decency of deportment, afforded me, at the time, much satisfaction.
At the time, the epidemic was worsening, with deaths ranging from 67 on September 16 to 96 on September The city's burial grounds were nearly filled. Meanwhile, cities in surrounding states established quarantine houses or roadblocks to stop Philadelphians from entering.
October brought higher death tolls but also relief. At the end of the month, a welcomed frost, which had been known to end previous epidemics, arrived. On October 31, a white flag flew over the city hospital, signifying that no yellow fever patients remained. Follow SandyHingston on Twitter. Search for: Search. I'm a scraper This search result is here to prevent scraping.
Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning — great with coffee! Benjamin Rush—believed it originated in the poor sanitary conditions and contaminated air of the city itself. However the disease had arrived, Philadelphians in desperately sought to avoid getting it.
They began keeping their distance from each other and avoided shaking hands. They covered their faces with handkerchiefs dipped in vinegar or smoked tobacco, which they thought would prevent them from breathing in contaminated air. 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 exit on the concerns of his wife, Martha. Alexander Hamilton contracted yellow fever early in the epidemic, and he and his family left the city for their summer home a few miles away.
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