The E-Sylum:  Volume 4, Number 46, November 11, 2001, Article 12

CACHE OF EPIDEMIC LETTERS UNCOVERED    

  Sound eerily familiar?    "The nation's capital was struck by a   
  plague so terrible that 10 percent of the population died in a   
  matter of months.  People panicked. Everyone who could   
  fled the city. Politicians seized the moment to try to gain   
  advantages over their opponents.  An instant book appeared   
  and became an international best seller, snapped up by some   
  who wanted to read the gruesome details of the disease and   
  its accompanying social disruption, and by others who wanted   
  to pore over its list of the dead.    

  The city was Philadelphia in 1793, and the disease was   
  yellow fever.  No one knew where the illness came from or   
  how it was spreading. No one knew the best treatment or   
  how to clean up the city.  It was a hemorrhagic fever, Ebola-like   
  in many symptoms.  And it was, in a way, a natural form of   
  bioterrorism.    

  Now, researchers at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia   
  have found a cache of letters and documents from that terrible   
  time, written by historic figures like Alexander Hamilton and   
  Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence   
  and a professor at what is now the University of Pennsylvania.    

  While the letters do not change the general picture of the epidemic,   
  they offer new details and give the events immediacy."       

  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/06/health/06YELL.html     

  U.S. numismatists, particularly early copper mavens, have long   
  sought copies of "Bring Out Your Dead : The Great Plague of   
  Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793" by J. H. Powell.   The   
  book details the calamity which forced the closing of the U.S.   
  Mint.   The mystery of the disease was solved by Benjamin   
  Rush (1746-1813),  who later became Treasurer of the Mint.    

  Rush detailed his findings in "An Account of the Bilious Remitting   
  Yellow Fever As It Appeared in the City of Philadelphia",   
  published in 1794.   The book was republished by Reprint   
  Services Corp (Jan 1, 1999,  ISBN: 0781288525)   For more   i
  nformation, see "Revolutionary Doctor" by Carl Binger, 1966,   
  and these web pages:       

  http://hsc.virginia.edu/hs-library/historical/classics/Rush.html     
  http://members.aol.com/Fever1793/account93.html   

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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