Sporadic cases of dysentery were at that time common. I have never seen that disease epidemic in Philadelphia.
The intermitting fever prevailed in the month of August, and in the autumn, chiefly in the suburbs and neighbourhood of the city. In the year 1765, it was epidemic in Southwark, and was so general, at the same time, as to affect two thirds of the inhabitants of the southern states. This fact is mentioned by Dr. Bond, in a lecture preserved in the minutes of the managers of the Pennsylvania hospital.
The slow chronic fever, called at that time the nervous fever, was very common, in the autumnal months, in the thickly settled parts of the city.
The bilious fever prevailed, at the same time, in Southwark. The late Dr. Clarkson, who began to practise medicine in that part of the city, in the year 1761, upon hearing some of his medical brethren speak of the appearance of bilious remittents in its middle and northern parts, about the year 1778, said they had long been familiar to him, and that he had met with them every year since his settlement in Philadelphia[66].
The yellow fever prevailed in the neighbourhood of Spruce-street wharf, and near a filthy stream of water which flowed through what is now called Dock-street, in the year 1762. Some cases of it appeared likewise in Southwark. It was scarcely known in the north and west parts of the city. No desertion of the citizens took place at this time, nor did the fear of contagion drive the friends of the sick from their bed-sides, nor prevent the usual marks of respect being paid to them after death, by following their bodies to the grave. A few sporadic cases of the same grade of fever appeared in the year 1763.
Pneumonies, rheumatisms, inflammatory sore throats, and catarrhs were frequent during the winter and spring months. The last disease was induced, not only by sudden changes in the weather, but often by exposure to the evening air, on porches in summer, and by the damp and cold air of places of public worship in winter.
The influenza was epidemic in the city in the spring of the year 1761.
The malignant sore throat proved fatal to a number of children in the winter of 1763.