Customer Reviews

Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793 (Middle Ages Series)

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This is a great story, full of familiar people (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson), life and death situations, bravery, cowardice, avarice, public hysteria, and stupidity. The author chose to focus on the drama of the event and the clash of medical authorities. But it seems to me that an even greater story lies in the mystery of why no serious effort was made to solve the mystery. That is, given that no one knew what caused the sudden and inexplicable death of thousands of America's finest citizen's, why was the scientific method not applied? Instead, the medical profession selected a host of mostly disastrous therapies, mainly lethal doses of mercury and bloodletting. Possibly as many people died from the "cures" as from the disease. What does this event tell us about our society's willingness to accept authority and mysticism, when a small dose of knowledge would go a whole lot further? This is a fascinating if horrifying portrait of our culture, as well as a great read.

Frequently when we study history we fail to realize how fragile health was in pre technological early American life. Yellow fever worked its manevolence on the average of an outbreak every 10 years back in the 18th century. The plague of 1793 was particularly bad, and here is its chronicle. The writer, John Powell, was a scholar and reasearch director of the Free Library of Philadelphia. With access to the papers of Dr. Benjamin Rush his account is a factual, and thougough study of the great plague. It is fully indexed, illustrated, and annotated; with an interesting editor's preface in addition to the author's preface, and afterwards.

Obviousely by what was written from the first reviewer he has no medical knowledge. This book portrays a disasterous time in Philadelphia that was repeated several times thereafter. However, the medical treatment in this time was based on the humours of the body : black bile, yellow bile, blood and phelgm. They utilized bloodletting and mercury concoctions to purge the body of "pestilence".

This book tells the story of the time of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793. It paints a picture of a time where cleanliness wasn't exactly up to par and nor was the medical care. At the time Philadelphia was thought to have the leading field in medicine, however the doctors were not prepared for that kind of crisis. There was many theories about what was causing the sickness. In that time they believed that rotting coffee brought overseas was the reason why people were falling ill. Another believed that it was unseen vectors in the air.

That summer many french refugees from the island of santa domingo arrived telling tales or a horrid fever. That July was when the fever struck; people had violent fever, yellow skin and black vomit. They usually died within a few days. When the frost finally arrived that November and killed the mosquitoes (that were the cause of it) one-tenth of the citys residents had died.

I highly recommend this book. It paints a clear picture of an effect of an epidemic in a time when not much could be done.

I ENJOYED READING THE BOOK, AND RECCCOMEND IT TO ANYONE WHO ENJOYS READING REAL HISTORY. PROVIDES A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE/ACCOUNT OF PHILADELPHIA, AND THE REACTION TO A PROBLEM THAT REACHES INTO EVERY CORNER OF THE CULTURE.

MANY GREAT PEOPLE STRUGGLED TO GET PHILADELPHIA THROUGH THESE DAYS!

As I write this it's approaching summer in Philadelphia and I have just been reminded to shut the windows by a hungry mosquito that zipped under my nose and sat on my arm. I don't live very far from 3rd and Walnut where Dr Benjamin Rush and his assistants were bleeding patients out in the street. I also walk by Samuel Powell's home several times a week and the placards remind me of his death in that great plague. Indeed all over Philadelphia there are tangential reminders of the plague, the bodies were often buried where they dropped and of course there are graveyards all over the city. If I had a backyard I would be very interested to dig around in it.

The most terrifying aspect of this book is how Powell, correctly, focuses on the medical mythologies of the time, you can hardly call what they practice science. Their theories of how the plague was created: rotten coffee on a dock, foul miasmas in the air, boat loads of refugees from Santo Domingo are only topped by the remedies they invented and proudly advertised. From discharging rifles and cannons to 'break up the air' to bleeding quarts of blood from gravely ill patients while also forcing them to ingest mercury and jalap which basically cauterized their innards and blackened their teeth. The healthy who couldn't afford to run off to country homes went terrified about their business taking the extra precaution to soak their clothes in vinegar, wear camphor dipped cotton balls stuffed up their noses while chewing garlic and smoking cigars.

It's a fascinating read and residents of center city Philadelphia should familiarize themselves with it.

I bought this book, lost it bought another and then lost that one. So, now I am on my third copy of it, but if I lose it, I will buy another because this is such a fascinating story. By that I mean the story of a yellow fever epidemic that swept Phildaelphia in 1793. It is high drama from a local and national view at the time. The local is that of the public officials trying to effectively deal with the plague that eventaully kills more than 5,000 of the town's citiznes. Another local angle, but with larger implications, is the coverage of the black or negro role in the plague. The blacks came to have a prominent role, primarily because of two men who founded what must have been the first black Methodist church--the sect from which the rest of the black Methodist churches sprang. One of the very interesting threads in the book is how these two black men (former slaves) viwed themselves as equal to the whites of the city. Their viewws, for that time, I found fascinating because I thought that all black people of the period, particularly former slaves, must have had an inferior view of themselves. These men did not, yet as they tried to be equal to the whites in the city, at one point, the whites shunned them even made it clear that they, the whites, did not feel them equal. That's when they formed their own church. I do not have the book right at my side at this moment, so, sadly, I do not remember their names. There are pictures of them in the book, or at least one of them, too, that are presented as white men would have been presented at the time, too. These men came to have a major role in the plague by having black citizens help the city by removing and burying bodies. This came about, in part, because of the view that blacks were not as prone to get the disease as whites. The role of the blacks became important, too, because the city government there didn't just need their help, it had to have them as few whites would do what they did.

Another thread in this story is that of Stephen Girard who at the time of the plague was a very wealthy man. With his wealth, he could easily have gone elsewhere during the plague as many did. Yet he didn't. More that that he helped orgranize a hospital for plague victimes and personally attend many of them. This was at a time when no one understood the cause of the disease at all. And, some feared it could be contagious. So most people tended to stay away from or avoid those who came down with the disease. Yet, this very, very wealthy man personally assisted some of these seriously ill people by pulling off their vomit-soaked clothes and cleaning them himself. Truly, he was a remarkable man. You can find more about him on the web and how his loan of many millions of dollars propped up the federal government during the War of 1812 and how he founded a school for the unfortunates in Philadelphia that still exist today.

George Washington comes up in the book, by the way, but for having stayed away during the plague--as most federal officials did during the plague. Philadephia was then the heart of the federal government at the time, and the presence of the disease created some challenges for it.

Finally, and probably most interesting, the main thread throughout the book is the doctors in Philadephia at the time, who had to be the best and most educated in America. And, the main doctor in this book is Dr.Benjamin Rush of American Revolution fame. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. And, the drama among the doctors is all about their varying ideas of how to treat the disease and how none of them really worked with any certainty, of course, because none of them knew the cause of the disease. Dr. Rush comes out as a very compassionate man, but, as the author says, he also comes out as one of the villains in thise terrible saga--though he never knew it and could not know it.

Conclusion: If you like to read and you like a good story, get this book. It is a great read and a great story.