A Treatise on the Plague and Yellow Fever / With an Appendix, containing histories of the plague at Athens in the time of the Peloponnesian War; at Constantinople in the time of Justinian; at London in 1665; at Marseilles in 1720

by James Tytler

New York has also suffered very considerably from this disease. Here it appeared in 1791, in the autumn, and in a part of the town remarkable for its vicinity to a collection of filth. In 1792 it made no progress; and in 1793, though some died of it who fled from Philadelphia, it did not spread. In 1794 it returned with considerable violence, and with still greater in 1795. In the history of this disease by Dr. Seaman,[189] he takes notice that in July and August an unusual number of persons suffered from drinking cold water, and some fell down and died in the streets; but the Doctor supposes this to have happened rather through the excessive heat of the sun than the drinking of water. As the disease came on, all others gave way to it, even “the common remitting bilious fever;”[190] and in the month of July some cases occurred. We have already had occasion to take notice of the death of Dr. Treat, who was taken ill on the 22d of July; but before that time, on the 6th of the same month, Dr. Seaman says that, in conjunction with this gentleman, he had visited a patient “affected with all the full-marked and decided symptoms of an highly malignant yellow fever.”[191] The disease continued to gain ground in August, and became extremely violent in that and the following month; but, according to our author, the low ground in the southeast part of the city was the “grand centre of the calamity, diffusing its effects like diverging rays, aiding, by its most powerful influence, different secondary centres, already smoking hot, to flame out its pestiferous operations.” In this part of the town five hundred died in three months.

The attack at this time did not arouse the people to a proper sense of their danger. As formerly, the origin of the disease in 1795 had been attributed to the filth of the city. Next year it was attributed to the same, and so in 1797 and 1798. This last year, particularly, it is said to have originated partly from great quantities of putrid beef and fish, collected for exportation, and which could not be exported. In Mr. Hardy’s account of this fever, it is calculated that there died in 1798 two thousand and eighty-six; but that, if it were taken into the account how many left the town and died in the country, the number would amount to between two thousand four hundred, and two thousand five hundred.

It is not in Philadelphia and New York alone that this distemper has prevailed. Boston, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Portland, and even detached spots in the country, to which it is not possible to trace any infection, have felt its ravages. At Salem also, where the disease was never known before, twenty-one cases, including some doubtful ones, appeared in 1798; and of these, eleven proved fatal. In 1796, when it prevailed in Newburyport, it was supposed to have been introduced by a vessel from the West Indies; and, according to Dr. Coffin, the opinion would have been incontrovertible, had not a large quantity of fish-garbage been collected at the place where the vessel landed; so that, though the disease spread from that place, it could not be known whether it proceeded from the vessel, or the fish, or both. It seems now unfortunately to be the case, that where this disease once gets footing it cannot easily be eradicated. If we suppose it always to be imported, the continual intercourse with the West India islands will account for this; but the extreme difficulty, or rather impossibility, of procuring an account of facts or even a single fact which cannot be controverted, renders every thing that can be said upon the subject uncertain and precarious. In the case of New London particularly, where 81 persons were destroyed by it last year, neither importation nor collections of filth could be assigned as the cause; nevertheless it began near a wharf; but Mr. Holt, in his account of the disease, thinks it was most probably owing to the mere heat and dryness of the season. On the other side of the question, however, we must still insert Dr. Brackett’s account of the origin of the disease at Portsmouth, in answer to a letter from Dr. Oliver of this place.

“The yellow or pestilential fever made its first appearance at Portsmouth, about the first of August last. Eight or ten days before that time a vessel arrived here from Martinico, and brought a French family (four or five in number.) This vessel, before she left the West Indies, had two sailors taken sick (as the captain informed me) one of whom died on the passage home; the other was on the recovery when the vessel came into this port.

“There was not, nor had not been for a long time before, any fever in this town. Two or three days after, I heard that one or two men, who were labourers (and probably had been on board, as they lived nigh where the vessel lay at the wharf) died suddenly with fever, but am uncertain whether with yellow fever, as I never saw them. The first of August, the owner, whose house was about four or five rods distant from the vessel, had a child of four or five years of age taken sick; the next day I visited it, and two days after he died. The symptoms appeared like a cholera morbus—sick stomach, and frequent puking of black bile. The day before he died a brother of his, fifteen years old, was taken ill, and had much the same symptoms, only greater inflammation and distress. He was blooded freely, took calomel, bark, &c. He died five days after sickened. Between the 8th and the 20th of August, four or five of the other children and servants were taken with the same symptoms, and recovered. On the sixteenth day, a daughter, seventeen years of age, was taken down with the same disease: she was treated in the same manner, with bleeding, mercury, warm bath, bark, &c. and died on the 9th day. This patient had a great discharge of blood from her mouth and gums for three days before she died. One or two more of the family had it afterwards, and recovered. All these patients took the infection, I believe, about the same time. Many others in that neighbourhood had the fever during this time, about one half of whom died: out of forty-six patients I lost fifteen. If I could procure a soreness of the fauces, by administering calomel in small doses, and rubbing it in the gums, or by frictions on the legs and arms with mercurial ointment, the third or fourth day, I was sure of their recovery.

“How many died of this disease in the whole, I have forgotten; as, through fatigue, and debility of body and mind, I kept no notes: I think rather more than half of those who had it. The fever agreed in every symptom, almost, with that described by Dr. Rush and others. The contagion did not appear to be propagated, as the largest number who had the disease were seized in the month of August, and lived in the streets only which communicated with the wharf where the vessel lay, and the beach where she was graved. These streets are in the highest part of the town, and always esteemed the most healthy, and as free of putrid substances as any in it. In the months of September and October the fever was followed by dysentery, and spread through almost every part of the town and its environs. There has been no case of fever or dysentery since last fall: this place, during the winter, and summer thus far, has been uncommonly healthy; and it appears likely to continue so, if the committee of health should not be remiss in their duty. Thus, without any comments, I have endeavoured to give you a short history of the pestilential fever, as it appeared here last summer. The ideas, you may communicate to the author of the book intended to be published.”

The following letter from Dr. Warren, which he obligingly sent to two physicians in Salem, gives an accurate account of the distemper which prevailed in Boston last year:

“I should immediately have answered your favour of last month, but for a wish to give you as complete an account of the causes and mortality of the late epidemic as could be collected.

“There were a number of suspected causes, which, though concealed during the prevalence of the disease, it was hoped would be developed after the agitation of the public mind had entirely subsided; and I was in expectation that some regular returns would have been made of the numbers who had passed through the disease, and of those who had died with it, so that some estimate might be formed of its malignity and mortality; but such returns have not yet been made, and it is therefore impossible to obtain any satisfactory evidence on those heads. I suppose the number of deaths to have been rather short of two hundred; but this is only a rude guess, and should not be relied on in forming any consequential deductions on the subject. I shall, however, now offer such an account of the disorder as my present materials have enabled me to prepare.

“The first unequivocal appearance of the malignant fever, in the town of Boston, was on the 20th of July 1798 (though one family had been attacked with a fever, attended with unusual symptoms, as early as the middle of June; but, as no other instances occurred for so long a time, of an alarming nature, some doubts may perhaps be justly entertained of the identity of the affection.) Three or four cases only, I believe, happened between this and the latter end of the month. The two first of these were young men employed in stores directly opposite to each other, on Green’s wharf, near the Town-dock. A few days after, three or four persons were seized with the same complaint, whilst following their respective occupation in Market square, on the east and south sides of Faneuil Hall, or the Market-house. In the beginning of the month of August several persons were taken sick in the same neighbourhood, chiefly young men between 16 and 24 years of age, whilst employed in stores and counting houses there situated. The stores in Merchant’s row, extending from the Market to State-street were more especially visited with the disease, and, in the course of the same month, a family at the bottom of State-street, and several persons at Oliver’s dock, were taken sick. At this place a kind of bason is formed between a point of the town projecting from Fort hill, and the Long wharf, which is constantly receiving the offals of fish, and other animal substances, which from its situation could not be washed off by the waters contained in it. This spot is remarkable for having been the residence of most of the persons first attacked with the bilious remittent fever of 1796. To the latter end of this month the number of sick continued to be increasing; but the attacks were principally confined to the above-mentioned quarters, till at length the disease appeared on the south side of Fort hill, at some distance to the southward of Oliver’s dock, leaping, as it were, over the summit of the hill, without lighting upon the inhabitants on the north of that eminence. The fatality of the disease was here probably greater than in any part of the town of equal population; and it was nearly the last place in which it disappeared. Very few families who remained in their own houses upon the hill escaped its attack; and the progress of the disease, in all the places above mentioned, seemed to have been arrested only by means of the evacuation of the buildings by the people who inhabited them. In the latter end of August, and through the month of September, many persons were taken sick in Fore-street, which runs northerly from Market of Dock square, along the heads of the wharves, on the eastern side of the town.