Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
History
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
On the 28th and 30th, there fell an unusual quantity of rain. The winds
were south-west and north-west during the greatest part of the summer
months. The latter were sometimes accompanied with rain.
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.
AN
ACCOUNT OF SPORADIC CASES
OF
_YELLOW FEVER_,
AS THEY
APPEARED IN PHILADELPHIA,
IN 1801.
The month of January was intensely cold. In February it became more
moderate. The diseases, during these two months, were catarrhs and a few
pleurisies.
In March and April there fell an unusual quantity of rain. The hay
harvest began in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia on the 28th of May. A
few mild cases of scarlatina anginosa occurred during these months.
In June the weather was dry and healthy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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