1762 — Aug-Nov,[1] Yellow Fever, Philadelphia, PA –~100?
–~100? Rush (Blanchard; derived from note that the fever carried off upwards of 20 a day.)[2]
Narrative Information
Redman: “…the yellow fever…raged among us chiefly in the southern parts of the city in 1762. By recurring [returning?] to and examining the contents of my day-book in the months of August, September, and October of that year…hoping thereby to render such and the best information I can, at this distance of time, on the subject to the College of Physicians….” (pp. 9-10)
“The 28th of August appears to be the first instance of my prescribing directly as to one in the yellow fever…as I then had but a small share of practice below Pine Street…with Drs. Bonds and some others, I have some notion that they had patients in it thereabouts a week before me. From thence to the 1st of September my share of patients with it was small, not above four or five; though the others had, I think in that space of time, many more additions in that quarter. But from that time they daily increased upon me, so that by the 15th, or rather from the 20th to the 25th (when it seems to have been at the height of its progress), as it appears by my book, I had daily to attend eighteen or twenty patients in the different stages of it, exclusive of convalescents. From the 27th it appears to have gradually declined, so that by the 20th of October I had but two or three fresh patients in it, and those I believe only such persons as had lately come to lodge or live in that part of the town. After that I had but one new patient that appears to have had that fever in its full force, all others being, according to my prescriptions either convalescents from it or dysenteries and remitting fevers, with some symptoms analogous to the precedent fever, but not very dangerous, and, if I recollect right, seldom fatal.
“The fever aforesaid was mostly circumscribed between Pine Street northerly to three or four squares from thence southerly, and extended from Front or Water Street to Third or Fourth Street westward. Some few had it nearly as low as the Swedes’ Church, and even to Moyamensing, but not many. I had only one patient near the last-mentioned place. A few had it also about the bridge and along Dock Street toward Walnut Street; but very few above Walnut Street were affected with it. Its first and greatest ravages were about the new market and the square to the eastward of it, in which — after some considerable search and tracing it — it was found to have originated in a number of small, back tenements, forming a kind of court, the entrance to which was by two narrow alleys from Front and Pine Streets, and where sailors often had their lodgings, to which a sick sailor from on board a vessel from the Havannah (where it then raged) was brought privately after night, before the vessel had come up to town, to the house of one Leadbetter, where he soon died, and was secretly buried; and I believe Leadbetter, with most of his family and many others in that court, soon after fell a sacrifice to the distemper; and from thence it spread rapidly, first affecting the houses nearest adjoining in Front and Pine Street.
“The patients were generally seized with a sudden and severe pain in the head and eye-balls, which were, I think, often though not always a little inflamed, or had a reddish cast, great prostration, or rater depression of spirits, pain in the back and bones, a sick stomach, generally attended (but in various degrees of violence) with frequent vomiting, more or less of green or yellow bile, and was distinguished from the cholera morbus by not having a purging with it. There was also a kind of cardialgia [heartburn] or burning heat about the scrobiculis cordis with great oppression….” (pp. 10-14)
“They generally died on the fourth, fifth, or sixth day, some few later; but after the seventh day, or even sooner, if the pulse was much calmer and slower, without a coma, but inclined to an easy, natural sleep, tho’ short, the urine nearer to a straw colour, with a moist skin and tongue, and the bowels easily kept regular, we were encouraged to hope and promise much, and generally succeeded in our prognostication. Yet some failed us after, if they had only some, but not all the above promising symptoms clearly….” (p. 16)
Rush: “….I had once seen it [yellow fever] in the year 1762. Its symptoms were among the first impressions which diseases made upon my mind. I had recorded some of these symptoms. I had likewise recorded its mortality. I shall here introduce a short account of it from a note book which I kept during my apprenticeship.
In the year 11762, in the months of August, September, October, November and December, the bilious yellow fever prevailed in Philadelphia, after a very hot summer, and spread like a plague, carrying off daily for some time, upwards of twenty persons.
The patients were generally seized with rigors, which were succeeded with a violent fever, and pains in the head and back. The pulse was full, and sometimes irregular. The eyes were inflamed, and had a yellowish cast, and a vomiting almost always attended.
The 3d, 5th and 7th days were mostly critical, and the disease generally terminated on one of them, in life or death.
An eruption on the 3d or 7th day over the body, proved salutary.
An excessive heat, and burning about the region of the liver, with cold extremities, portended death to be at hand.
(Rush, Benjamin, M.D. An Account of the Bilious remitting Yellow Fever as it appeared in the City of Philadelphia in the Year 1793. Philadelphia, Thomas Dobson, 1794, pp. 13-14.)
Sources
Redman, John, MD. An Account of The Yellow Fever as it Prevailed in Philadelphia in the Autumn of 1762 (A paper presented to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia at its stated meeting, September 7, 1793. Philadelphia: Printed by order of the College, 1865. Google preview accessed 4-4-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=uyc3AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Rush, Benjamin, M.D. An Account of the Bilious remitting Yellow Fever as it appeared in the City of Philadelphia in the Year 1793. Philadelphia, Thomas Dobson, 1794. Google preview accessed 4-5-2018 at:
https://books.google.com/books?id=crA_AAAAcAAJ&dq=1762+yellow+fever+philadelphia&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[1] Redman has the outbreak from Aug-Oct. Rush has it from Aug-Dec. We compromise between the two in that the mosquitoes which are the vector are generally killed off, or go into hibernation, with the first good frost.
[2] It would not take many such days for there to have been one hundred deaths. In a 1699 yellow fever epidemic there were 220 deaths, in 1741 there were 250. In the big epidemic in 1793, between 4,000 and 5,000 died, and so on. We suspect that there were many more than approximately 100, however, the larger the number one guestimates, the farther out on the limb one has gone.