An American Plague

Jim Murphy

4 ideas

1. Free African Society nurses Philadelphia 1793

   During the 1793 yellow fever epidemic, Benjamin Rush asked Richard Allen and Absalom Jones of the Free African Society to supply nurses and cart-men, wrongly believing Black people were immune; Black Philadelphians then nursed the sick, carried away bodies and buried the dead while many white residents fled. Afterward, publisher Mathew Carey's account accused them of profiteering and theft. Allen and Jones answered with a published rebuttal that documented their losses and their deaths from the fever, making it an early case of Black Americans using print to defend their public record.

2. Rush's certainty sustained a harmful treatment

   Benjamin Rush promoted aggressive bleeding and mercury purging with professional authority and moral certainty, and the treatment spread even though it weakened already-sick patients. French-trained physicians urged gentler care of rest, fluids and cleanliness, and the two camps clashed. With the fever's cause unknown, an advocate's standing and conviction helped carry a remedy regardless of how patients fared.

3. Who could flee shaped who stayed

   About 20,000 residents left Philadelphia, including President Washington and many officials, while those without the means to leave, the poor and many Black residents, remained along with a few volunteers. Murphy shows that the ability to escape was unevenly distributed, so the burden of the epidemic fell hardest on those who could not get out.

4. Mayor Clarkson's volunteer committee governs abandoned capital

   With the federal and state governments gone, Mayor Matthew Clarkson called for volunteers and formed an ad hoc committee of about a dozen ordinary citizens. The committee ran the Bush Hill fever hospital, which Stephen Girard reformed, set up an orphanage, and distributed food and money. It shows that when formal institutions collapse, governance falls to whoever is willing to stay and improvise.

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