It was said by some physicians in the public papers, that the neighbourhood of the grave-yards was more infected than other parts of the city. The reverse of this assertion was true in several cases, owing probably to the miasmata being diluted and weakened by its mixture with the air of the grave-yards: for this air was pure, compared with that which stagnated in the streets.
It was said further, that the disease was propagated by the inhabitants assembling on Sundays for public worship; and, as a proof of this assertion, it was reported, that the deaths were more numerous on Sundays than on other days; occasioned by the infection received on one Sunday producing death on the succeeding first day of the week. The register of the deaths shows that this was not the case. I am disposed to believe that fewer people sickened on Sundays, than on any other day of the week; owing to the general rest from labour, which I have before said was one of the exciting causes of the disease. From some facts to be mentioned presently, it will appear probable, that places of public worship, in consequence of their size, as well as of their being shut up during the greatest part of the week, were the freest from miasmata of any houses in the city. It is agreeable to discover in this, as well as in all other cases of public and private duty, that the means of health and moral happiness are in no one instance opposed to each other.
The disease, which was at first confined to Water-street, soon spread through the whole city. After the 15th of September, the atmosphere of every street in the city was charged with miasmata; and there were few citizens in apparent good health, who did not exhibit one or more of the following marks of their presence in their bodies.
1. A yellowness in the eyes, and a sallow colour upon their skin.
2. A preternatural quickness in the pulse. I found but two exceptions to this remark, out of a great number of persons whose pulses I examined. In one of them it discovered several preternatural intermissions in the course of a minute. This quickness of pulse occurred in the negroes, as well as in the white people. I met with it in a woman who had had the yellow fever in 1762. In two women, and in one man above 70, the pulse beat upwards of 90 strokes in a minute. This preternatural state of the pulse during the prevalence of a pestilential fever, in persons in health, is taken notice of by Riverius[48].
3. Frequent and copious discharges by the skin of yellow sweats. In some persons these sweats sometimes had an offensive smell, resembling that of the washings of a gun.
4. A scanty discharge of high coloured or turbid urine.
5. A deficiency of appetite, or a greater degree of it than was natural.
6. Costiveness.
7. Wakefulness.