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During the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic, Benjamin Rush became convinced the disease was a single inflammatory fever. He treated it with massive bloodletting and a purge of calomel and jalap, sometimes draining a large share of a patient's blood over days. He attributed recoveries to the treatment, attributed deaths to cases seen too late, and publicly attacked physicians who used gentler methods.
As the federal government, the state government, and most city officials fled Philadelphia in 1793, Mayor Matthew Clarkson stayed. He assembled an ad hoc committee of volunteer citizens who took over the city's functions: they ran the Bush Hill fever hospital, fed the poor, housed orphans, and buried the dead. Stephen Girard and Peter Helm personally managed the hospital. When formal authority evaporated, legitimacy passed to whoever stayed and did the work.
Rush believed Black people were immune to yellow fever and urged Absalom Jones and Richard Allen of the Free African Society to organize Black Philadelphians as nurses, cart drivers, and gravediggers. The immunity belief was false, and many of them sickened and died doing work others had fled. Afterward, Mathew Carey's popular account of the epidemic accused Black nurses of extortion and theft. Jones and Allen published a rebuttal documenting their sacrifices.