Epidemics 1753-1799

"Our Physicians have begun to discover that fresh Air is good for People in the Small-Pox and other Fevers. I hope they will find out that it does no harm to People in Health."
Benjamin Franklin, 1773

During the period from 1753 to 1799, Philadelphia experienced many epidemics, including the worst in its history, the yellow fever of 1793.

In the Revolutionary and Federal periods, Philadelphia boomed. Temporarily weakened and battered by British occupation during the Revolution, in 1778 the city population had declined to about 20,000. But growth soon resumed, and in 1790 the population reached 42,000. Philadelphia remained a pre-industrial seaport city, whose major economic activities revolved around trading and shipbuilding. By the year 1800, over 400,000 barrels of flour a year passed through the port from rich surrounding farmland. In this period, many grand institutions and private homes were built, but the water supply still depended on easily contaminated wells.

In this period, the major epidemic diseases to attack Philadelphia's adult residents were yellow fever, small pox, measles, and typhoid. We call a rapidly spreading outbreak of contagious disease an "epidemic." Philadelphians had experienced many such epidemics since the 1682 arrival of William Penn's Welcome, which endured a small pox outbreak at sea that killed a third of its passengers. In crowded old Philadelphia, epidemics spread quickly.

Children suffered most from whooping cough and diphtheria. In an 18th-century city, the logistics of epidemics presented major challenges, including quarantine, mass medical care, and disposal of dead bodies. Often the overwhelming fear of epidemic disease led many people to flee the city.

Yellow fever and malaria are transmitted by the bite of a mosquito. Stagnant water serves as a breeding ground for the insects. Typhoid and cholera are transmitted by contaminated water. Small pox passes directly from one person to another. Conditions in Colonial and Federal Philadelphia assisted all these agents of contagion.