Short Account of Malignant Fever in Philadelphia – Chapter XV (1793), 
Philadelphia County, PA

Contributed to the PAGenWeb Archives by Marjorie B. Winter [marjw@cox.net]

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C H A P.  XV.—Origin of the disorder.

      THIS disorder has most unquestionably been imported from the West Indies.  
As yet, however, owing to various obvious reasons, it is difficult to fix, with 
absolute precision, on the vessel or vessels, (for it is very probable it came 
in several, from the different infected islands) by which it was introduced.  
That it is an imported disorder, rests on the following reasons, each of which, 
singly, justifies the theory, but (Page 68) all, collectively, established it to 
the satisfaction of every candid and reasonable man.

    1st      The yellow fever existed in several of the West India islands a 
          long time before its appearance here .

    2nd      Various vessels from those islands arrived here in July.

    3rd      Scarcely any precautions were used to guard against the disorder.

    4th      A respectable citizen of Philadelphia, supercargo of one of our 
          vessels, saw, in July, six or seven people sick of this fever on board 
          a brig at Cape François bound for our port. 

(Page 69)

    5th      A vessel from Cape François, which arrived here in July lost 
          several of her people with this fever, on her passage.

    6th      A person from Cape François, died of this fever at Marcus Hook —and 
          another at Chester. 

    7th      The vessels in which those persons arrived, and which were infected 
          with the effluvia of the sick and dead, came freely to our wharves, 
          and particularly to that very one where the disorder made its first 
          appearance.

    8th      Persons sick of the yellow fever have been landed in our city from 
          vessels arrived from the West Indies. 

    9th      Dead bodies have been seen deposited secretly on board some of 
          those vessels.

    10th     There is the strongest reason to believe, that the beds and bedding 
          of the sick and dead were not destroyed, but, on the contrary, brought 
          into our city.

    11th     This disorder had every characteristic symptom that marked it on 
          former occasions, when its importation was unquestioned.

      Lately, of all the reasons advanced to support the opinion of its having 
been generated here, the only one, that has even the appearance of plausibility, 
viz.  the influence of a tropical season, such as we had last summer, is 
unanswerably refuted by the concurring testimony of Lind, Lining, Warren, and 
Bruce, who, in the most unequivocal manner, have declared that it does not 
depend on the weather.

      “It does not appear, from the most accurate observations of the variations 
of the weather, or any  difference of the seasons, which I have been able to  
make for several years past, that this fever is any way caused, or much 
influenced by them; for I have seen it at all times, and in all seasons, in the 
(Page 70) coolest, as well as in the hottest time of the  year. 

      “This fever does not seem to take its origin from any particular 
constitution of the weather, independent of infectious miasmata, as Dr.  Warren 
has formerly well observed; for within these twenty-five years, it has been only 
four  times epidemical in  this town, namely in the autumns of the years 1732, 
39, 45, and 48, though none of those years, (excepting that of 1739, whose 
summer and  autumn were remarkably rainy) were either warmer or more rainy, (and 
some of them less so) than  the summers and autumns were in several other years, 
in which we had not one instance of any one seized with this fever: which is 
contrary to what would have happened, if particular constitutions of the 
weather, were productive of it, without infectious miasmata”. 

      "In omni anni tempestate, sese essert hic morbus; symptomata autem 
graviora observantur, ubi calor magnus cum multa humiditate conjungitur ." 
Oslisli anni tenipe/late, sese essert hic morbus; symptornata autem graviora 
observantur, ubi calor magnus cum multa humiditate conjungitur.”