Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 - Beginnings

Beginnings

In the Spring of 1793, French colonial refugees, some with slaves, arrived from Cap Français, Saint-Domingue. The 2,000 immigrants were fleeing the slave revolution in the north of the island. They crowded the port of Philadelphia, where the first yellow fever epidemic in 30 years began in the city in August. It is likely that the refugees and ships carried the yellow fever virus and mosquitoes. It is transmitted during mosquito bites. The mosquitoes easily breed in small amounts of standing water. The medical community and others in 1793 did not understand the role of mosquitoes in the transmission of yellow fever and other diseases. Doctors and other survivors of the epidemic wrote extensively about it trying to learn from the crisis. (Many of their accounts are now available on-line, as is seen in the Primary Sources section below.)

In the ports and coastal areas of the United States, even in the northeast, the months of August and September were considered the "sickly season," when fevers were prevalent. In the South, planters and other people wealthy enough usually left the Low Country during this season. Natives thought that newcomers especially had to undergo a "seasoning" and were more likely to die of what were thought to be seasonal fevers in their early years in the region. Philadelphia then was the temporary capital of the United States, and the government was due to return in the fall.

The first two people to die of yellow fever in early August in Philadelphia were both recent immigrants, one from Ireland and the other from Saint-Domingue. Letters describing their cases were published in a pamphlet about a month after they died. The young doctor sent by the Overseers of the Poor to treat the Irish woman was perplexed, and his treatment didn't save her.