Effects Of Yellow Fever On Philidelphia

While reading An American Plague, I noticed an interesting detail that Yellow Fever could actually be prevented. Murphy (2003) notes that doctors noted the symptoms of the sick patients from the disease Yellow Fever. Some of the symptoms were pain in the back and painful aching in the body. This detail led me to wonder if there was a way that you could prevent Yellow fever. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that wearing bug repellent will reduce the chances for getting bit by a mosquito and they also talk about having more clothing on your body will also help because then mosquito's can not bite you. The article also talks about vaccines because we know have a yellow fever vaccine and that will cure yellow fever.

According to gilderlehrman.org, 5,000 people died because of the disease known as Yellow Fever. Matilda, or Mattie, was one of those people who got sick, and she tells us about how it is to have Yellow Fever. Yellow Fever is a fatal disease that makes the victim have various symptoms, such as yellow tinted skin, vomit, headache, nausea, and many more terrible symptoms. This is the reason I believe that the main theme in Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson is suffering. One way Fever, 1793 shows this theme is through sickness.

The American Plague was written by Molly C. Crosby, who is as much as a researcher as she is an author. In 1648, a slave ship returning from Africa carried a few mosquitoes infected with a deadly virus know as yellow fever. The ship landed in the New World and thrived in the hot wet climate and on the white settlers. The New World has never come in contact with yellow fever and as a result no immunities have been built up. The virus obtained its name from the way it turns the victim’s skin and eyes a golden yellow. Victims also suffer from very high fevers, external and internal bleeding, and blackish vomit. In America yellow fever killed thousands of peoples, halted trade, and disrupted the government. Although many

People had no hope of ending this terrible plague. Many doctors and nurses were doing their best to help cure the fever and end the Yellow Fever madness forever. All was lost until the cold front eliminated Philadelphia’s mosquito population and the death toll fell to 20 per day by October 26. People were happy that the Yellow Fever had finally ended. Over the years better medical treatments had been improved over the years. They began to use treatment that didn’t involve letting a person bleed to death or any other dangerous treatments that could hurt someone. Today, there is a vaccine that prevents the Yellow Fever around world.

The discovery of yellow fever would have not been possible if people had not put

Throughout history many different diseases have infected the world. Such diseases consist of measles, mumps, malaria, typhus and yellow fever. Many of these diseases are caused by different things and originated in different countries.

A great misfortune took place during the summer of 1793. It was one of the driest and hottest summers in years making way for many disease spreading pests like mosquitoes (Gum 1). Said bugs and rodents took the lives of thousands leaving Colonial America in terrible condition. The College of Physicians not only established organization during this time of chaos, but they also limited future epidemics like the events that took place in Philadelphia and Colonial America from occurring again. To expand upon, the college created eleven rules for people to follow in order to prevent Yellow Fever from dispersing any further (Dobson 2). These rules included avoiding “all unnecessary intercourse” with those who have contracted the disease; housing all of the diseased in a large open room, removing “offensive matters from the diseased’s room” (2), frequently cleaning the selected room, and bathing the infected as quickly as possible; having a medical center for each city so the poor can also be assisted with regards to Yellow Fever; putting a stop to the ringing of the church bells; burying the dead fever victims in a private manner;

France was at war with many countries. John Adams later would write 10,000 citizens marched in Philadelphia, threatening to drag Washington and make him declare war. Adams thought that the yellow fever prevented chaos. At the start, people believed that the two-thousand five-hundred city’s African-Americans were immune to the fever. Philadelphians initially blamed the outbreak on refugees from France. People believe the disease spread person to person. Recommendation for ridding of the disease were smoking tobacco, cleaning yourself with vinegar, carrying a tarred rope, covering the floors of rooms with a two-inch-deep layer of dirt, chewing garlic, hanging a bag of camphor around your neck, lighting bonfires, and setting off guns in the

This disease was very deadly and killed many due to the fact that many people did not know they had Yellow Fever. If one did show symptoms of the disease it usually happened 3-4 days after contraction making it too late for anything to be done to help with the symptoms. The most common symptoms would be fever, headache, jaundice, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue. Since there was no cure for this disease this contracting it would ultimately lead to death. Once contracted the disease incubates in the body for 3-6 days causing sever pain and suffering before death.

Imagine yourself sick and no cure in 1793 in Philadelphia your dead or someone else is dead. If I lived during 1793 in Philadelphia the struggles would include disease, survival, death. To begin, the whole book is about yellow fever and yellow fever is a disease. For example the story initially starts in the second chapter, Polly one of Matilda's friend dies from a fever but they do not know what fever. What this means is that the fever is barely starting in Philadelphia. Additionally, it has seemed that survival was very important and very hard in Philadelphia. On page 24 in the first sentence it had said how many people have died already “A week later sixty-four people had died.” This explains that the fever was going very quickly and you

Jim Murphy, in his nonfictional narrative An american Plague, describes in vivid detail the challenges faced by the citizens of Philadelphia during the devastating Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. During the dreadful and deadly time, there were many selfless volunteers to stepped forward to help. Mayor Matthew Clarkson was one of the brave individuals who chose to stay in Philadelphia to provide leadership, despite the danger. Through his strong sense of duty, his selflessness, and unwavering perseverance, Mayor Clarkson became a symbol of heroism for all the selfless volunteers who stayed and made a real difference in Philadelphia.

Humphreys, however, takes a political approach in “Yellow Fever and the South,” focusing on governmental actions outside of the realm of the courtroom. Her work is composed of a detailed outline of the development of public health in the South and the subsequent tension that manifested between federal and state powers. Humphreys asserts that public health in the South was born in response to the frequent yellow fever outbreaks in urban environments where there was “overcrowding, putrefying organic matter, and the excavation of soil for construction.” Sanitary reform, along with quarantine, was an often attempted mechanism of epidemic prevention. Sanitation efforts were difficult given the fierce belief in laissez-faire government, the conflation

The fever was consuming Philadelphia. Thousands of people were killed. My name is Elizabeth Brown sister of Clara and Ida Brown, we three are physicians coming over from England. We have arrived in Philly and we are volunteering to help out in Bush Hill but, there are other physicians from Philadelphia that rumor has it that they are actually killing people. There are similarities between treatments of the Philadelphia doctors and the French doctors aka us.

The Yellow Fever virus came from Central or East Africa. With transmission between primates and humans, the virus has been spread from there to West Africa. The virus was probably brought to the Americas with the slave trade ships from 1492 after the first European exploration. The first case of Yellow fever was recorded in Mexico by Spanish colonists in 1648. Consequently, the virus started to spread also in North America. In Philadelphia in 1793, more than the 9% of the population die. The American government had to escape from the city that was the temporary capital. One of the most famous outbreaks happen in Europe in Barcelona in 1821.How explains the article "The 'plague' of Barcelona. Yellow Fever epidemic of 1821", the outbreak of

The historical research done into the lives of the principals, details of historical events and of the virus of yellow fever. As Crosby asserts, yellow fever came from West Africa to the United States on slave ships, is carried by mosquitoes and thrives in warm and wet environments (History.com Staff, 2009). However, in the book Crosby focuses the view of the history of yellow fever in the United States on the Memphis epidemic of 1878. While this was a massive epidemic and the worst one in American history, (Crosby, 41), the research leaves out other major predecessors to the Memphis epidemic. The Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic in 1793 depopulated the nation’s capital at similar levels and was the first major outbreak in the United States (Graham, 2016). Outbreaks continued. The outbreak in New Orleans in 1853, settled in the perfect environment for an outbreak, killed a whopping 7,849 (Waits, 2016). Though these epidemics and others are mentioned in Crosby’s account, they are presented as more of an afterthought than an important part of the history of yellow fever as they