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

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

Copyright.  All Rights Reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/pafiles.htm
*********************************************************


CHAP.  IX- Extravagant Letters from Philadelphia.  Credulity put to the 	
		test.

	That I might not interrupt the chain of events in Philadelphia, I have 
deferred, till now, giving an account of the proceedings in the several states, 
respecting our fugitives.  As an introduction thereto, I shall prefix a short 
chapter respecting those letters, which excited the terror of our neighbours, 
and impelled them to more severe measures than they would otherwise have 
adopted.

	Great as was the calamity of Philadelphia, it was magnified in the most 
extraordinary manner.  The hundred tongues of rumour were never more 
successfully employed, than on this melancholy occasion.  The terror of the 
inhabitants of all the neighbouring states was excited by letters from this 
city, distributed by every mail, many of which told tales of woe, whereof hardly 
a single circumstance was true, but which were every where received with 
implicit faith.  The stresses of the city, and the fatality of the disorder, 
were exaggerated as it were to see how far credulity could be carried.  The 
plague of London was, according to rumour, hardly more fatal than our yellow 
fever.  Our citizens died so fast, that there was hardly enough of people to 
bury them.  Ten, or fifteen, or more were said to be cast into one hole 
together, like so many dead beasts .  One man, whose feelings were so composed, 
as to be facetious on the subject, (Page 46) acquainted  a correspondent, in New 
York, that the only business carrying on, was grave digging, or rather pit 
digging .  And at a time when the deaths did not exceed from forty to fifty 
daily, many men had the modesty to write, and others, throughout the continent, 
the credulity to believe, that we buried from one hundred to one hundred and 
fifty .  Thousands were swept off in three or four weeks .  And the nature (Page 
47) and danger of the disorder, were as much misrepresented, as the number of 
the dead.  It was said, in defiance of every day's experience, to be as 
inevitable by all exposed to the contagion, as the stroke of fate.   

	The credulity of some, the proneness to exaggeration of others, and I am 
sorry, extremely sorry to believe, the interested views of a few , will account, 
for these letters.