The privies have become so numerous, and are often so full, as to become offensive in most of the compact parts of the city, more especially in damp weather.
The pump water is impregnated with many saline and aërial matters of an offensive nature.
While these causes exert an unfriendly influence upon the bodies of the citizens of Philadelphia, the extreme elevation or depression of their passions, by the different issues of their political contests (now far surpassing, in their magnitude, the contests of former years), together with their many new and fortuitous modes of suddenly acquiring and losing property, predispose them to many diseases of the mind.
The present diseases of Philadelphia come next under our consideration.
Fevers have assumed several new forms since the year 1766. The mild bilious fever has gradually spread over every part of the city. It followed the filth which was left by the British army in the year 1778. In the year 1780, it prevailed, as an epidemic, in Southwark, and in Water and Front-streets, below Market-street[67]. In the years 1791 and 1792, it assumed an inflammatory appearance, and was accompanied, in many cases, with hepatic affections. The connection of our subject requires that I should barely repeat, that it appeared in 1793 as an epidemic, in the form of what is called yellow fever, in which form it has appeared, in sporadic cases, or as an epidemic, every year since. During the reign of this high grade of bilious fever, mild intermittents and remittents, and the chronic or nervous forms of the summer and autumnal fever, have nearly disappeared.
Inflammations and obstructions of the liver have been more frequent than in former years, and even the pneumonies, catarrhs, intercurrent, and other fevers of the winter and spring months, have all partaken more or less of the inflammatory and malignant nature of the yellow fever.
The pulmonary consumption continues to be a common disease among both sexes.
The cynanche trachealis, the scarlatina anginosa, the hydrocephalus internus, and cholera infantum, are likewise common diseases in Philadelphia.
Madness, and several other diseases of the mind, have increased since the year 1766, from causes which have been mentioned.
Several of the different forms of gout are still common among both sexes.