Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic Analysis

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.

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.

In the early 1900’s medicine was making some steps closer into some great improvements for health and better understanding of the human body. Doctors with sufficient knowledge of the human body and cures for diseases and viruses were scarce. People were much more concerned with government and politics, than health and medicine, until one of the greatest and most grotesque lethal pandemics that’s struck the earth in human history. This pandemic the “Spanish Flu” spread so rapidly and had an extremely high mortality rate. This was caused by the close contact of humans and poor cleanliness and sanitation, and the host (virus) and the body taking harsh action

Yellow fever is a deadly disease caused by a viral infection that is transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito. Although it is found to be most common in males in their early 20's, yellow fever can affect any sex, race, or age. Since yellow fever is carried by mosquitoes, it is most often found in areas such as Central America, the northern half of South America, and Central Africa where mosquitoes are abundant. The reason why it is found so often in these

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

The doctors that came up with the treatments for this disease were French and American. The American and French doctors were similar in many ways. They both treated yellow fever and they were both curing in the same city ,Philadelphia.

To begin, the Philadelphian doctors insist of taking out 162 ounces (over a long period of time) of blood out the the yellow fever victim. Second of all, they (Philadelphian doctors) splash water on the patient's. In paragraph 3 it says, “Throw a few buckets of cold water on the patient.”. Alongside, the French doctors make the victims take a ice cold bath instead. Last of all, the American doctors burned nitre so the patients could inhale it. It reads in paragraph 2 “Burn nitre (potassium nitrate) and inhale the

Throughout the course of the novel, the reader witnesses Mattie evolve from a self-absorbed 14-year-old girl to an aspiring young adult. These changes seen in her happen simply because she has no other choice considering the circumstances she is put in. During the year of the fever epidemic, Mattie’s stages of growth and development into a responsible young women are made evident through her experiences. In the beginning, we see “Teenager Mattie”. Mattie is kind of mean to her mother, sleeps in late, and when given some responsibilities, she usually has to be badgered into performing them.

Yellow Fever, a disease that can’t be cured as of this century. In 1793, Yellow Fever had come to Philadelphia and killed thousands of people. There were some that have lived thru the epidemic which were the lucky but those who were not all died from Yellow Fever. One of the people that survived the epidemic was a teenaged girl name Mattie Cook. She survived the Yellow Fever disease and had to undergo many challenges thru this epidemic.

To start with, the American doctors made you take 3 types of purges to make you sweat, vomit, and go to the bathroom. The French doctors just let you rest and drink some light lemonade. Next, the American doctors made you bathe both the feet and hands in vinegar. Then they made you lay in the middle of a room in bed, linen soaked in the warm vinegar. The French made you bathe in cold water instead of warm vinegar. Last, the American doctors bled you of ⅘ of your blood. The American doctors did this action since they thought the blood was infected with the virus. If they got rid of it, the doctors thought the fever will be gone. As you can see, the Philadelphian and French doctors are identical in countless unalike ways.

One critic who admires the quality of Fever 1793 is Wendy J. Glenn in her 2010 article “Fever 1793.” She believes that Anderson created a very well written and well detailed novel. Glenn continues to describe all of the awards the book has won and discusses how positively critics view the novel. Critics and reviewers take interest in Anderson’s characters and setting. Anderson successfully creates characters that could’ve existed in the time of yellow fever, and describes the setting similarly to how it would’ve actually been. It is obvious that Anderson did a sufficient amount of research for her novel, and is probably very proud of the positive reviews. Glenn goes on the summarize the plot of the story, and then describes the story origins and personal connections that Anderson has.

1793: the yellow fever has taken over Philadelphia like butterflies migrating. I am a first year physician to volunteer to help fever victims. I, the physician, am doing this so I can report back to to King George the III. There were over a 1,000 people that died of yellow fever in Philadelphia. That is most of the population in Philadelphia. So I am going to study these two methods (the two methods are the American method and the French method.)

To start off, here are the similarities the the french and American doctors had in common. Their top priority was to save the yellow fever victims the best that they could. One of the hardest parts was to find what would work was if it help the fever calm down. It was a hard job helping the victims. It all depended

The reader knows all was not right in philadelphia during 1793. While reading the book “An american Plague”, the reader is informed about the number of mysterious deaths from an unknown fever. There are only a certain number of advanced doctors who are going to be able to figure the traits of the fever and come to a conclusion on what has caused it and what it is spread by. One of the doctors remembers when he was 16 that a plague occurring was the yellow fever, it was killing dozens of people rich and poor. It had the same exact traits of the unknown sickness that was killing people daily.

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