Philadelphia's Free Black Community Care for the Sick Walter Reed proved in 1900 that mosquitoes carried yellow fever. Despite extensive research on the disease in the decades that followed the epidemic, it would take more than a century-and a savage outbreak among troops fighting the Spanish-American War-before Dr. By the time it subsided in November 1793, the disease had killed 5,000 people, or about one-tenth of Philadelphia’s population at the time, and infected hundreds of thousands of others. Stevens’ homeopathic approach proved little more effective than Rush’s more traditional methods, however, and yellow fever continued to spread. These critics included Hamilton, who took up his pen to spread the word of the gentler methods prescribed by his own doctor, which involved taking cold baths, drinking Madeira wine and hot brandy and ingesting large amounts of quinine (aka “Peruvian bark”), according to biographer Ron Chernow. His undeniably harsh treatments-including bloodletting, “Mercurial Sweating Powder,” and forced vomiting-did not curb the spread of the disease, and critics argued it only increased his patients’ suffering. Croix whom he met again in Philadelphia.ĭespite all his efforts, Rush had just a flawed understanding of yellow fever as anyone else at the time. Edward Stevens, a boyhood friend of Hamilton’s from St. They both recovered under the care of Dr. Hamilton’s wife, Eliza, soon fell ill as well, and their children were evacuated to Eliza’s parents home in Albany, New York. President George Washington, who returned to his beloved Mount Vernon estate, blamed his exit on the concerns of his wife, Martha.Īlexander Hamilton contracted yellow fever early in the epidemic, and he and his family left the city for their summer home a few miles away. Those who had the means to leave the city quickly did so, including Jefferson himself. They covered their faces with handkerchiefs dipped in vinegar or smoked tobacco, which they thought would prevent them from breathing in contaminated air. They began keeping their distance from each other and avoided shaking hands. However the disease had arrived, Philadelphians in 1793 desperately sought to avoid getting it. Benjamin Rush-believed it originated in the poor sanitary conditions and contaminated air of the city itself. Others-including the city’s leading physician, Dr. Some thought it had been brought to Philadelphia by a ship bearing French refugees from a slave rebellion in Santo Domingo (now Haiti). Arch Street Wharf in Philadelphia, where some of the first cases were identified.Īt the time, no one knew what caused yellow fever, or how it spread.

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