|
During the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia, 5000 or more people were listed in the official register of deaths between August 1 and November 9. The vast majority of them died of yellow fever, making the epidemic in the city of 5 people one of the most severe in United States' history. By the end of September, 20,000 people had fled the city. The mortality rate peaked in October, before frost finally killed the mosquitoes and brought an end to the epidemic in November. Doctors tried a variety of treatments, but knew neither the origin of the fever nor that it was transmitted by mosquitoes (which was not verified until the late nineteenth century). The mayor and a committee of two dozen organized a fever hospital at Bush Hill and other crisis measures. The assistance of the Free African Society was requested by the city and readily agreed to by the members, based on the mistaken assumption that native Africans would have the same partial immunity to the new disease as many had to malaria, the most common source of fever epidemics during the summer months.〔From Genetic resistance to malaria: ''"Where this parasite (falciparum ) is endemic, young children have repeated malaria attacks. () Repeated malaria infections strengthen adaptive immunity and broaden its effects against parasites expressing different surface antigens. By school age most children have developed efficacious adaptive immunity against malaria."''〕 Black nurses aided the sick and the group's leaders hired additional men to take away corpses, which most people would not touch. Blacks in the city died at the same rate as whites, about 240 altogether. Some neighboring towns refused to let refugees in from Philadelphia, for fear they were carrying the fever. Major port cities such as Baltimore and New York had quarantines against refugees and goods from Philadelphia, although New York sent financial aid to the city. ==Beginnings== In the Spring of 1793, French colonial refugees, some with slaves, arrived from Cap Français, Saint-Domingue. The 2,000 immigrants were fleeing the slave revolution in the north of the island.〔(Mark A. Smith, "Andrew Brown's 'Earnest Endeavor': The ''Federal Gazette'' 's Role in Philadelphia's Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793" ), ''The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography,'' Vol. 120, No. 4 (Oct., 1996), pp. 321–342, accessed 28 March 2012〕 They crowded the port of Philadelphia, where the first yellow fever epidemic in 30 years began in the city in August.〔 It is likely that the refugees and ships carried the yellow fever virus and mosquitoes. It is transmitted during mosquito bites. The mosquitoes easily breed in small amounts of standing water. The medical community and others in 1793 did not understand the role of mosquitoes in the transmission of yellow fever and other diseases. Doctors and other survivors of the epidemic wrote extensively about it trying to learn from the crisis. (Many of their accounts are now available on-line, as is seen in the Primary Sources section below.) In the ports and coastal areas of the United States, even in the northeast, the months of August and September were considered the "sickly season," when fevers were prevalent. In the South, planters and other people wealthy enough usually left the Low Country during this season. Natives thought that newcomers especially had to undergo a "seasoning" and were more likely to die of what were thought to be seasonal fevers in their early years in the region.〔Currie, William, ''An Historical Account of the Climate and Diseases of the United States,'' Philadelphia: T. Dobson, 1792〕 Philadelphia then was the temporary capital of the United States, and the government was due to return in the fall. President Washington left the city. The first two people to die of yellow fever in early August in Philadelphia were both recent immigrants, one from Ireland and the other from Saint-Domingue. Letters describing their cases were published in a pamphlet about a month after they died. The young doctor sent by the Overseers of the Poor to treat the Irish woman was perplexed, and his treatment didn't save her. Note: A 2013 history book by Billy G. Smith (professor of history at the Montana State University) makes a case that the principal vector of the 1793 plague in Philadelphia (and other Atlantic ports) was the British merchant ship ''Hanley'', which had fled the West African colony of Bolama (an island off West Africa, present day Guinea-Bissau) the previous November, trailing yellow fever at every port of call in the Caribbean and eastern Atlantic seaboard. See: The Ship of Death: The Voyage That Changed the Atlantic World (Yale University Press: 2013).〔(The Ship of Death ) Yale University Press, 2013; accessed 26 September 2014.〕〔(The Do-Gooders Who Unleashed A Plague ) book review of "The Ship of Death", reviewed by Peter Lewis for British newspaper ''The Daily Mail'', 30 January 2014; accessed 26 September 2014.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Yellow fever epidemic of 1793」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|