(p. C9) Hardly anyone noticed the first to die in the sultry August of 1793—a few foreigners, a sailor, an oyster seller. Most Philadelphians brushed off the deaths as the result of air fouled by rotting coffee or fish near the docks. Then the healthy and affluent began to die: public officials, ministers. The plague that was sweeping the young nation’s temporary capital was yellow fever, a contagion little understood at the time. Writes Robert Watson in “America’s First Plague,” the outbreak was “one of the worst epidemics in American history.”
In the course of three horrendous months, between 6,000 and 9,500 people would die, constituting 15% to 20% of Philadelphia’s population.
. . .
The source of the plague is a story in its own right. It apparently derived from infected mosquitoes that had bred on a ship named the Hankey. Earlier in the year, the Hankey had transported an expedition of antislavery Londoners to an island off the coast of present-day Guinea-Bissau, where they hoped to found a model biracial colony. They were instead beset by hostile natives and rampant yellow fever, which the few desperate survivors carried with them across the Atlantic to ports in the Caribbean and eventually to Philadelphia. Mr. Watson, a professor of history at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., notes that “the ship inadvertently unleashed death at every port where it docked.” (A riveting account of this hapless colonial experiment may be found in Billy G. Smith’s “Ship of Death,” published in 2013.)
Fortunately for those who remained in the city, Philadelphia’s capable mayor, a businessman named Matthew Clarkson, aided by a beleaguered committee of brave volunteers, did his best to organize public-health measures and burials.
. . .
Among the doctors who struggled to cope with a disease they couldn’t cure, Mr. Watson rightly emphasizes the polymath Benjamin Rush. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Rush incarnated both the humanistic best and medical worst of the early republic. Although his treatments were widely accepted, they were disastrous. He believed dogmatically in violent purges, forced heat to blister the limbs and above all bloodletting. He bled his patients of as much as 10 ounces a day, probably killing more of them than he saved. When he himself fell ill, he subjected himself to the same brutal regimen but survived to persist in his malpractice.
For the full review see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date June 9, 2023, and has the title “‘America’s First Plague’ Review: Attack of the Yellow Jack.”)
The book under review is:
Watson, Robert P. America’s First Plague: The Deadly 1793 Epidemic That Crippled a Young Nation. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023.
The “riveting” book mentioned above is:
Smith, Billy G. Ship of Death: A Voyage That Changed the Atlantic World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.