
AMERICAN MUSEUM GUIDE LEAFLETS 

THE CONQUEST OF YELLOW FEVER 
The discovery of the mosquito transmission of yellow fever is 
one of the most striking and dramatic chapters of sanitary science 
and one of the brightest episodes in the history of our country. 
Between the years 1702 and 1800 this terrible disease had 
appeared in the United States thirty-five times and between 1800 
and 1879 it visited the country every year with two exceptions. In 
1793 a tenth of the population of Philadelphia are said to have 
perished from its ravages. 
Mathew Carey writes of this epidemic, “‘the consternation of 
the people of Philadelphia at this period was carried beyond all 
bounds...:..°<.- People hastily shifted their course at the sight of a 
hearse coming towards them. Many never walked on the foot-path 
but went into the middle of the street, to avoid being infected in 
passing by houses wherein people had died. | Acquaintances and 
friends avoided each other in the streets and only signified their 
regard by a cold nod. The old custom of shaking hands fell into 
such disuse that many shrunk back with affright at even the offer of 
the hand. A person with a crépe, or any appearance of mourning, 
was shunned like a viper. And many valued themselves highly on 
the skill and address with which they got to the windward of every 
person they met. Indeed, it is not probable that London, at the 
last stage of the plague, exhibited stronger marks of terror than were 
to be seen in Philadelphia from the 24th or 25th of August till pretty 
late in September.”’ 
The Philadelphia epidemic was the occasion of a vigorous 
discussion as to the contagiousness or non-contagiousness of the 
disease in which the eminent Dr. Benjamin Rush was finally con- 
verted from the latter to the former view. For over a century 
arguments were advanced pro and con, without conclusive result, 
and as late as 1898 the United States Marine Hospital Service 
summed up the matter as follows: ‘“While yellow fever is a com- 
municable disease, it is not contagious in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term, but is spread by the infection of places and articles of 
bedding, clothing and furniture. .... One has not to contend with 
an organism or germ which may be taken into the body with food 
or drink, but with an almost inexplicable poison so insidious in its 
approach and entrance that no trace is left behind.” 
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