1789-90 — Fall-Spring, Influenza Epidemic; CT, ME, MA, NH, NY, Philadelphia, RI–many

–Many Kohn: “New England Influenza Epidemic of 1789.” 2001, p. 235.

Narrative Information

Kohn: “New England Influenza Epidemic of 1789.”
“Widespread outbreak of influenza that affected thousands of people in the fall of 1789. The contagious disease, which attacks the respiratory system and can result in pneumonia and pleurisy, also struck many inhabitants in neighboring New York State and Nova Scotia and various other places in North America, including Philadelphia and Georgia…

“The flu virus first entered New England through Connecticut seaports with infected traders and travelers from New York City, where influenza was raging in September 1789. The infectious disease moved northward, reaching Hartford, Connecticut, in mid-October, where noted lexicographer Noah Webster was one of many stricken with the flu that month. From Connecticut, it spread to Rhode Island and Massachusetts, where many residents of Boston became infected in early November. In continued to travel northward that month, striking New Hampshire and later Maine and Nova Scotia in December before waning.

“Males and females of all ages and socioeconomic classes were attacked by the epidemic, which lasted in each locality for about four to six weeks and was particularly harsh on the elderly and the chronically ill. Many of the deaths were from secondary pneumonia, and case-mortality is believed to have been less than 50 percent during the epidemic.

“In the spring of 1790 many New Englanders contracted influenza anew, and in the fall parts of the northeastern United States were again fighting the flu virus.

“Further reading: Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City; Patterson, Pandemic Influenza.”

Webster: “Section VIII. Historical view of pestilential epidemics, from the year 1788 to 1798 inclusive, comprehending the last epidemic period in America.” [p. 283] ….

“In autumn 1789 appeared the influenza or epidemic catarrh. The precise time and place of its appearance, are not ascertained. Some accounts say, it originated in Canada. But I shall confine my observations to its progress in Atlantic America. It was first observed about the close of September 1789, in New-York and Philadelphia. Dr. Rush informs me, that it was brought to Philadelphia by the members of Congress, who returned from New-York, about the first of October. Another account, written by one of the faculty in Philadelphia, and published in the 7th volume of the Museum, mentions its first appearance there, about the time of the Friends Yearly Meeting, in September. The precise time is probably not ascertainable; the opinion of its propagation by infection is very fallacious, as I know by repeated observations. It probably appeared in detached cases, some days before it became a subject of observation.

“From the middle states, it moved rapidly over the whole country. It appeared in Hartford, where I then resided, about the middle of October. On the 19th of that month, I left Hartford for Boston and arrived the next day in good health. I was seized with the influenza on the 23d, and by the aid of a diluting regimen, recovered in four days. No person who attended me was seized with the distemper, sooner than the other inhabitants of that town. I mention this to disprove the common opinion of its infection; not that I deny it to be in a degree, infectious; altho my own observations do not warrant that concession; but I aver that its propagation depends almost entirely on the insensible qualities of the atmosphere. Two ladies who left Boston with me on the second of November, before the disease had appeared in their family, and before it was a subject of conversation, were seized with it in Hartford, at the same time, that it became epidemic in Boston, one on the 8th and the other on the 12th.—The disease had then passed Hartford, and there is no evidence of their being exposed to any person infected. This fact shows a regular progress in the state of air producing the disease—as persons leaving Boston and travelling one hundred and twenty miles distance, were effected precisely at the time the disease became epidemic in that town.

“This disease pervaded the wilderness and seized the Indians—it spread over the ocean and attacked seamen a hundred leagues from land, and as to infection, entirely insulated—it appeared in the West-Indies nearly at the time it did in the northern states. It overspread America, from the 15th to the 45th degree of latitude in about 6 or 8 weeks; and how much further it extended, I am not informed.

“It should have been mentioned that, in September, anterior to the invasion of the catarrh, the scarlatina anginosa appeared in Philadelphia; but in October it yielded to the influenza, the controlling epidemic. The scarlet fever re-appeared in December, and became epidemic; often blending itself with the influenza. It exhibited one predominant feature of the whole series of succeeding epidemics, a prevalence of bilious matter, which was often discharged by purging and vomiting. This disease continued to prevail in Philadelphia, and if my information is correct, in some parts of New-Jersey, till the spring of 1790. The measles occurred in some cases, but was not epidemic….

“Early in the spring of 1790 we had a second epidemic catarrh. I was attentive to its origin and progress. I found it at Albany in the last week in March, and heard of it in Vermont about the same time. I returned to Hartford, but altho exposed repeatedly to its infection on my journey, I was not seized earlier than others in Hartford, where the disease appeared about the middle of April. It spread to the southward, arrived at Philadelphia near the close of that month, and disappeared in that city about the middle of June. In the northern states, as far as my knowledge extends, the disease was more violent, than in the preceding autumn. Many plethoric persons of firm habit almost sunk under it; while consumptive people and hard drinkers fell its victims.” (Webster, Noah. A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases… 1799, pp. 299-291.)

Sources

Duffy, John. A History of Public Health in New York City 1625-1866. NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968. Accessed 3-13-2021 at: https://www.russellsage.org/sites/default/files/HistPublicHealth2.pdf

Kohn, George Childs (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence From Ancient Times to the Present (Revised Edition). NY: Checkmark Books, 2001.

Webster, Noah. A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases; with the principal phenomena of the physical world, which precede and accompany them, and observations deduced from the facts stated (two volumes). Hartford, CT: Hudson & Goodwin, 1799. Accessed 3-13-2021 at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N27531.0001.001/1:13?rgn=div1;view=fulltext