On the 11th of September, a clerk of Mr. Levi Hollingsworth, and, on the 12th, a clerk of Mr. John Connelly, died with the yellow fever.
A plentiful shower of rain fell on the night of the 21st of this month.
About this time there appeared one and twenty cases of yellow fever in Spruce-street, between Front and Second-streets. They were all in the neighbourhood of putrid exhalations. Fourteen of them ended fatally.
No one of the above cases of malignant fever could be traced to a ship, or to a direct or indirect intercourse with persons affected by that disease.
While Philadelphia was thus visited by a few sporadic cases only of yellow fever, it was epidemic in several of the cities of the United States, particularly in New-York, Providence, in Rhode Island, Norfolk, and Baltimore. In the last named place, it was publicly declared by the committee of health to be of domestic origin.
The dysentery was epidemic, at the same time, in several of the towns of Massachusetts and New-Hampshire. It was attended with uncommon mortality at Hanover, in the latter state.
This difference in the states of health and sickness in the different parts of the United States must be sought for chiefly in the different states of the weather in those places. The exemption of Philadelphia from the yellow fever, as an epidemic, may perhaps be ascribed to the strength and vigour of the vegetable products of the year, which retarded their putrefaction; to frequent showers of rain, which washed away the filth of the streets and gutters; and to the perfection of the summer and autumnal fruits.
The months of November and December this year were uncommonly healthy. During the former, several light shocks of earthquakes were felt in Lancaster and Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania, and in Wilmington, in the state of Delaware.