Yellow Fever in Philadelphia, 1793
Katie Lu
Block 5 In America’s early days, there were many plagues and illnesses. One was particularly deadly, killing thousands by the time the epidemic ended on October 26, 1793. At the time, the sickness was known as the American plague. Doctors had many ways to diagnose a patient, the most significant being red and yellow spots in the tongue and eyes. When family and friends started getting fevers, many people left them to untrustworthy doctors who thought they knew the sickness when they saw it. Patients exhibited many symptoms, including loss of appetite, tiredness, random chills, fainting, and dizziness. Combined with a yellow tinge of skin, fast heart rate could be used to diagnose the plague on sight. Doctors had their own beliefs on how to cure the disease, but all opinions differed. The American doctors promoted bleeding, thinking that if they could get the bad blood out of the body, the illness would go away. However, the French doctors, the people who came from where there were epidemics every year, disagreed and said the body was weaker without blood. When the epidemic had just started, doctors believed that African American people were immune to the disease. However, this was proved wrong a few weeks later when, they started getting sick also. There were also a lot of gunshots and cannon shots, because it was believed that they would clean the air, and in turn, the germs. They would also douse rags with vinegar and tie them around their faces and use them to clean, because it would act as bleach. Families would also burn mattresses, because people that were sick had lain on the bed, and they had nothing else to do with them. When the first frost came, people put their furniture outside because they believed the germs that caused the disease would freeze away. However, people in the medical field have advanced dramatically since the epidemic of 1793. Although there is still no known cure for the American plague, mortality rates have dropped significantly. Modern doctors gave the sickness that plagued Philadelphia the name yellow fever, because of the classic symptoms, yellow and red streaked eyes and tongue. Yellow fever begins with fever and muscle pain, followed by bloody vomit. In recent years,