"My dear Julia, …In one house I lost two patients last night, a respectable young merchant and his only child. His wife is frantic this evening with grief..." This book was very raw. It's not a scholarly, cultural examination but it succeeds in expressing the absolute desperation of those trying to battle yellow fever.

It centers largely around Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and overall pretty fascinating individual. He was mentioned in "Mad in America", my first read of the year, and several times in my smallpox books as an inoculator.
He survived a war and smallpox, but the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 shook him. He was the one to officially recognize and announce its arrival to the Fellows committee, directly influencing city policy. Despite Mayor Matthew Clarkson's unwavering support, Rush watched as friends and colleagues succumbed to it. There are extensive, if ineffective descriptions of various medical and folk treatments and unnerving tales of panic and familial desertion. We know today that it comes from the mosquito not "noxious effluvia." Searching all written accounts, Dr. Franklin gives Rush a description of yellow fever from 1741. It encouraged extreme purging as treatment and somehow it works... or so Rush's ego would have him believe...

But the real MVPs of this tragic part of history are members of Philadelphia's black community. "From among the poorest and most despised came some of the most heroic." Absalom Jones and Richard Allen of the African Society supply nurses, members offer to be trained by Rush (an abolitionist) and the Society goes into debt from paying for coffins for the poor. They wrote a vivid account entitled "A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, during the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia" With them, are the newly arrived immigrants from France coming through Philadelphia's port that bring their medical knowledge and ultimately out-perform Dr. Rush in their successful treatments! ( )

This book goes beyond history to provide an account of individual heroism and nobility. The primary hero is Dr. Benjamin Rush, who led the fight against the plague of yellow fever in Philadelphia of 1793. The book is both well-written and well-researched, filled with details about the plague and its effect on all aspects of life in Philadelphia starting in the summer of 1793. Caribbean refuges brought the Yellow Fever. Philadelphia's ravenous mosquitoes provided the perfect vehicle for spreading the disease by first lunching on an infected victim and then biting a healthy one. The first fatalities appeared in July and the numbers grew steadily. The afflicted initially experienced pains in the head, back and limbs accompanied by a high fever. These symptoms would often disappear, leaving a false sense of security. The chronicle of death at times seems overwhelming, but the courage of those physicians and others who fought against it are what made it a remarkable chronicle of the history of disease and the people who battled against it. ( )