Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 - Black Nurses

Black Nurses

The College of Physicians' advisory implied the fever was contagious and people should avoid contact with its victims, although "duty" required that they be cared for. Yet in families, when the person with the fever was a mother or father, they could forbid their children from coming near them. Rush knew of Dr. John Lining's observation during the 1742 yellow fever epidemic in Charleston, South Carolina, that African slaves appeared to be affected at rates lower than whites; he thought they had a natural immunity. Writing a short letter to the newspapers under the pseudonym "Anthony Benezet," a Quaker who had provided schooling for blacks, Rush suggested that the city's people of color had immunity and solicited them "to offer your services to attend the sick to help those known in distress." Richard Allen and Absalom Jones recalled their reaction to the letter in a memoir they published shortly after the epidemic:

"Early in September, a solicitation appeared in the public papers, to the people of colour to come forward and assist the distressed, perishing, and neglected sick; with a kind of assurance, that people of our colour were not liable to take the infection. Upon which we and a few others met and consulted how to act on so truly alarming and melancholy occasion. After some conversation, we found a freedom to go forth, confiding in Him who can preserve in the midst of a burning fiery furnace, sensible that it was our duty to do all the good we could to our suffering fellow mortals. We set out to see where we could be useful. The first we visited was a man in Emsley's alley, who was dying, and his wife lay dead at the time in the house, there were none to assist but two poor helpless children. We administered what relief we could, and applied to the overseers of the poor to have the woman buried. We visited upwards of twenty families that day - they were scenes of woe indeed! The Lord was plentiful to strengthen us, and removed all fear from us..."

"In order the better to regulate our conduct, we called on the mayor the next day, to consult with him on how to proceed, so as to be the most useful. The first object he recommended was a strict attention to the sick, and the procuring of nurses. This was attended to by Absalom Jones and William Gray; and, in order that the distressed might know where to apply, the mayor advised that upon application to them they would be supplied. Soon after, the mortality increased, the difficulty of getting a corpse taken away, was such, that few were willing to do it, when offered great rewards. The black people were looked to. We then offered our services in the public papers, by advertising that we would remove the dead and procure nurses. Our services were the production of real sensibility; - we sought not fee nor reward, until the increase of the disorder rendered our labour so arduous that we were not adequate to the service we had assumed."

Allen noted in his account that because of the increase in mortality, he and Jones had to hire five men to assist them in removing corpses, as most people avoided the sick and the dead. In a September 6 letter to his wife, Rush said that the "African brethren... furnish nurses to most of my patients." Despite Rush's theory, most of the city's people of color were not immune to the fever. Many of the slaves in Charleston in 1742 could have gained immunity before having been transported from Africa, by having been exposed to yellow fever in a mild case. People who survived one attack gained immunity. A total of 240 blacks died, in proportion to their population at the same rate as whites. People would say that the blacks did not die when they, died at the same rate as whites did too.