Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 - Aftermath

Aftermath

The Governor created a middle path: he ordered the city to be kept clean and the port policed to prevent infected ships, or those from the Caribbean, from docking until they had gone through a period of quarantine. The city suffered yellow fever epidemics in 1797, 1798, and 1799, which kept the origin and treatment controversies alive.

Some of the city's clergy suggested the epidemic was a judgment from God. Led by the Quakers, the religious community petitioned the state legislature to prohibit theatrical presentations in the state. Such entertainment had been banned during the Revolution and had only recently been authorized. After an extensive debate in the newspapers, the State Assembly denied the petition.

The recurrences of yellow fever kept discussions about causes, treatment and prevention going until the end of decade. Other major ports also had epidemics, beginning with Baltimore in 1794, New York in 1795 and 1798, and Wilmington in 1798, making yellow fever a national crisis. New York doctors finally admitted that they had had an outbreak of yellow fever in 1791 that killed more than 100 people. All the cities that suffered epidemics continued to grow rapidly. The widespread recognition that the epidemics were based along the waterfront meant that cities grew more rapidly in outlying areas, but that was also where land was available at lower cost. Families who could afford it planned to vacate the port cities during the sick season.

During the epidemic of 1798, Benjamin Rush commuted daily from a house just outside the city, near what is now 15th and Columbia Streets, to the new city fever hospital, where as chief doctor he treated fever victims. The civic responses to the 1798 epidemics in Philadelphia and New York were more complex than the efforts of the 1793 Mayor's Committee. For instance, Philadelphia forced evacuation of certain neighborhoods and placed refugees in supervised camps. After the epidemic, the city inspected all houses and destroyed those it deemed unhealthy.

American doctors did not identify the vector of yellow fever until the late nineteenth century. In 1881 Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor, argued that mosquito bites caused yellow fever; he credited Rush's published account of the 1793 epidemic for giving him the idea. He said that Rush had written: "Mosquitoes (the usual attendants of a sickly autumn) were uncommonly numerous..." In the late 1880s, Finlay's theories were confirmed in Cuba by experiments of the US Medical Army Corps under direction of Dr. Walter Reed in the late 1880s, in which subjects allowed themselves to be bitten by infected mosquitoes.