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
I am sorry to add that the moral effects of the fever upon the minds of
our citizens were confined chiefly to these acts of benevolence. Many of
the publications in the newspapers upon its existence, mode of cure, and
origin partook of a virulent spirit, which ill accorded with the
distresses of the city. It was a cause of lamentation likewise to many
serious people, that the citizens in general were less disposed, than in
1793, to acknowledge the agency of a divine hand in their afflictions. In
some a levity of mind appeared upon this solemn occasion. A worthy
bookseller gave me a melancholy proof of this assertion, by informing me,
that he had never been asked for playing cards so often, in the same
time, as he had been during the prevalence of the fever.
Philadelphia was not the only place in the United States which suffered
by the yellow fever. It prevailed, at the same time, at Providence, in
Rhode-Island, at Norfolk, in Virginia, at Baltimore, and in many of the
country towns of New-England, New-Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
The influenza followed the yellow fever, as it did in the year 1793. It
made its appearance in the latter end of October, and affected chiefly
those citizens who had been out of town.
The predisposing causes of the yellow fever, in the year 1797, were the
same as in the year 1793. Strangers were as usual most subject to it. The
heat of the body in such persons, in the West-Indies, has been found to
be between three and four degrees above that of the temperature of the
natives. This fact is taken notice of by Dr. M'Kitterick, and to this he
ascribes, in part, the predisposition of new comers to the yellow fever.
In addition to the common exciting causes of this disease formerly
enumerated, I have only to add, that it was induced in one of my patients
by smoking a segar. He had not been accustomed to the use of tobacco.
I saw no new premonitory symptoms of this fever except a tooth-ach. It
occurred in Dr. Physick, Dr. Caldwell, and in my pupil, Mr. Bellenger. In
Miss Elliot there was such a soreness in her teeth, that she could hardly
close her mouth on the day in which she was attacked by the fever.
Neither of these persons had taken mercury to obviate the disease.
I shall now deliver a short account of the symptoms of the yellow fever,
as they appeared in several of the different systems of the body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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