Yellow Fever Philadelphia

About Yellow Fever Philadelphia

The Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia killed approximately 5,000 people, roughly 10 percent of the city population. Philadelphia was the capital of the United States and the nations largest city. Dr Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the most prominent physician during the epidemic. He advocated aggressive bloodletting and purging, treatments now considered harmful. An estimated 20,000 residents fled the city, including George Washington and the federal government. The disease was likely brought by refugees and ships arriving from Saint-Domingue, where refugees were fleeing the slave revolution. The virus is transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The epidemic motivated the creation of the Philadelphia Board of Health, one of the earliest public health bodies in the United States. The debate between contagionists and anti contagionists during the epidemic influenced American medical thinking for decades. Walter Reed confirmed mosquito transmission, first proposed by Carlos Finlay, in 1900.