As pandemics wreak
havoc across the globe,
it's hard not to wonder how
our founding fathers might
have handled the
situation, but we know how.
Just six months after
the second inauguration
of George Washington,
yellow fever
ripped through the
city of Philadelphia.
So what did our
founding fathers do?
Today we're going to
take a look at how
America's founding
fathers reacted
when an epidemic struck,
but before we get started,
be sure to subscribe to
the Weird History channel,
and let us know in the
comments below what
other founding father history
you would like to hear about.
Now, this is a story
all about Philadelphia,
where the Constitution
was born and raised,
about the founding fathers when
the yellow fever was happening
and everything was crazed.
Yellow fever is believed to
have originated in Africa
before being spread to North and
South America via slave trade.
The first verified
outbreak in the new world
occurred in Barbados in
1647, and by 1744, it
had acquired the
name yellow fever.
Eventually, it
became so widespread
it was known as American plague.
The symptoms of
yellow fever typically
begin with muscle
pain and fever.
Next, the virus would attack
the kidneys and the liver, which
would cause the victim
to become jaundiced,
which earned it the
name yellow fever.
Finally, the patient would bleed
internally, painfully vomit,
and eventually perish.
Cotton Mather, a minister and
writer from 18th century New
England described
victims of yellow fever
as "turning yellow,
then vomiting, then
bleeding every way."
On September 9, 1793,
a merchant named
Samuel Breck recorded the deaths
of 45 people who were suffering
from yellow fever.
He also noted that these
45 deaths were nothing
compared to what followed,
for just a few weeks later,
another 1,000 people
met their demise.
Breck noted that the last
stage of symptoms was insanity.
Victims suffered what he called
unimaginable torments, which
sometimes included
sudden attacks of rage.
Breck described some
cases as so severe
that patients were driven
to leave their sick beds
and roam the streets.
One wandering man even waded
into a river and drowned.
It was late August of
1793 when a physician
named Benjamin Rush,
who also happened
to be one of the United States
founding fathers and signer
of the Declaration
of Independence,
realized the epidemic
sweeping through Philadelphia
was no simple virus.
It was yellow fever.
As the news spread, people
left the city in droves.
One witness to the
events recorded
that the disease had
created a universal terror
in which citizens fled the city
by whatever means they could--
coach, wagon, or cart.
Business grinded to a halt,
and the streets emptied.
Writing over a century later,
historian Lillian Rhodes
would observe that "the hearse
and the doctor's carriage
were the sole vehicles
on the street."
And no wonder, for
as Rhodes also notes,
the hospitals were in
a horrible condition.
Nurses could not be
had at any price.
Despite the outbreak,
President George Washington
and his cabinet continued
to meet in Philadelphia
as late as September of 1793.
The epidemic
continued to spread,
even infecting secretary of the
treasury and future Lin Manuel
Miranda musical subject
Alexander Hamilton.
Washington tried
to tough it out,
but when his neighbors came
down with yellow fever,
he fled the city.
So did 20,000 others,
including Thomas Jefferson.
Before long,
Philadelphia, which once
had a population
of 50,000 people,
was practically a ghost town.
According to Samuel
Breck, the city population
was reduced by half,
yet the disease
continued to spread
faster and faster.
People who were healthy one
day would be dead the next.
Breck wrote, the
wealthy soon fled.
The fearless or indifferent
remain from choice.
The poor from necessity.
In 1793, Philadelphia
was still the capital
of both the United
States of America
and the state of Pennsylvania.
So when yellow fever
shut the town down,
the state and federal
government shut down with it.
Washington and his
cabinet fled in September.
Shortly thereafter,
the legislature
went into an indefinite recess
when a dead body was discovered
on the statehouse steps.
It fell on Matthew Clarkson,
the Mayor of Philadelphia,
and a small committee
he formed to govern
the city during the crisis.
According to Samuel Breck,
most of the wealthy citizens
of Philadelphia fled the city.
Historian Ashley
Bowen suggests this
was a politically sensitive
issue for the young nation.
They didn't want to suggest
that Philadelphia wasn't
a healthy place for
the nation's capital
or that the republic
itself was diseased.
To help Philadelphia
survive the epidemic,
the mayor formed a committee
that was known as, well,
the committee.
They distributed food,
paid for relief efforts
by taking out loans, and helped
connect people with doctors.
They also arranged to take
donations of money and supplies
from concerned Philadelphians
and Americans in other cities.
Death and grief-- it pervades
nearly every house in the city.
Benjamin Rush was a prominent
doctor, especially when it
came to fighting yellow fever.
He took on a leadership role.
He worked for the
College of Physicians
to identify the fevers causes,
develop new treatments,
and educate the public about
how to avoid contracting it.
He refused to flee
the city, declaring,
"I have resolved to stick to
my principles, my practice,
and my patients to
the last extremity."
And he meant it.
He kept working even when he
contracted the fever himself.
However, while Rush's dedication
to fighting the disease
was no doubt
sincere, his results
often left a little
something to be desired.
During the epidemic,
Benjamin Rush
observed that immigrants
from the French West Indies
didn't seem to
contract yellow fever.
From this, he concluded that
black men and women were
immune to the disease,
writing, "from the accounts
of the yellow fever which had
been published by many writers,
I was led to believe that the
black population in our city
would escape it."
Rush widely publicized his
theory, which ultimately wound
up doing more harm than
good, because, well,
it just wasn't true.
The immigrants Rush studied had
likely developed an immunity
to yellow fever after previous
exposure in the West Indies,
where the disease
was widespread.
The free black people living
in Philadelphia at the time
didn't really share
that immunity.
Unfortunately, they
listened to Rush.
After Rush proclaimed
that black people were
immune to yellow fever, members
of a religious organization
called the Free African
Society voluntarily
offered to furnish nurses
to attend to the afflicted.
Their usual mission was
to provide aid exclusively
to free Africans and
their descendants,
but they were so
touched by the strife
throughout the city they were
willing to make an exception.
Sadly, this act of
selflessness would cost them.
The volunteers quickly
began to fall ill,
and Rush realized he was
wrong about their immunity.
He somberly admitted
he had been mistaken,
writing, "the black people
took the disease in common
with the white people,
and many of them passed."
Two months into the
epidemic, Benjamin Rush
began promoting a
treatment-- blood leaching.
He recommended
removing the blood
and the purging of
the patient's system
by administering mercury.
Rush insisted the
treatment would save lives,
but not everyone believed him.
Journalist William Cobbett
called Rush a quack.
In all fairness to Rush, he
probably sincerely believed
his own science.
When he himself took
ill with yellow fever,
he administered his own
treatment and lived.
In the absence of a
verifiable explanation,
the founding fathers
strongly disagreed over
what was causing the outbreak.
Benjamin Rush suggested rotten
food being sold at the wharf
was infecting people via miasma,
the now debunked theory that
disease is spread via bad
smells and polluted air.
However, Alexander Hamilton, who
was not throwing away his shot
to win the argument,
believed the disease
was being spread
by white refugees
fleeing conflicts
in the Caribbean.
The two also argued
over the best treatment.
Rush recommended bloodletting
and mercury purges.
Hamilton, on the
other hand, promoted
what was called the West Indian
treatment, which was also known
as the bark and wine cure.
Hamilton's proposed
treatment was quinine bark,
which, while effective
against malaria,
didn't actually help
with yellow fever.
Still, though, given that
he wasn't sapping blood
from the patient while infusing
their system with toxic levels
of mercury, Hamilton's
treatment would have definitely
been the lesser of two evils.
Given how little was known
about the cause of the outbreak,
the founding fathers who
stayed to work on the problem
kept a very open mind.
Benjamin Rush even
considered the possibility
that the illness
had come from space,
noting that, just before
the outbreak began,
a meteor was seen at 2 o'clock
in the morning on or about
the 12th of September.
While that sounds like
a pretty good basis
for a sci-fi movie,
not every suggestion
he had was so fantastic.
Rush later decided
that the culprit
was more likely to be a
shipment of rotting coffee.
Ironically, the source
of the yellow fever
was right under Rush's nose,
and he never even knew it.
He noted in journals
that mosquitoes
were uncommonly numerous during
the yellow fever outbreak.
Scientists would
eventually determine
that those mosquitoes
were, in fact,
the cause of the epidemic.
Rush, however, never
made the connection.
At the time of the
epidemic, Philadelphia
was arguably the most important
city in the United States.
Washington DC was still
under construction,
so Congress and the
president worked out
of the city of brotherly love.
It also had the busiest
port in the nation,
which would become the
subject of much debate
during the outbreak.
With goods and people
arriving every day,
many felt the fever must
have made its way into Philly
through the port.
Both Hamilton and Rush had their
eye on it at various points,
with Hamilton blaming
refugees, and Rush
blaming polluted goods.
The yellow fever
outbreak of 1793
brought Philadelphia
to its knees.
By October, 5,000 were dead,
and another 20,000 had fled.
By the time it was all over, one
of the most important populous
cities in a proud new nation
was literally decimated.
1 in 10 Philadelphians had died.
Samuel Breck later
reflected on the fact
that the lower classes were,
as usual, struck the hardest.
According to him,
no hospitals were
prepared to alleviate the
sufferings of the poor,
and for a long
time, nothing could
be done other than to furnish
coffins and men to bury them.
In the end, neither Rush, nor
Hamilton, nor any other doctor
was able to figure
out the epidemic.
It ended by pure luck when
a cold snap killed off most
of the mosquito population.
So what do you think?
How would the founding fathers
handle our current epidemic?
Let us know in the comments
below, and while you're at it,
check out some of these other
videos from our Weird History.
