1699 — Yellow Fever Epidemics Charleston, SC(170-311); Philadelphia (220) –390 – 531

— 390-551  Blanchard tally based on State (colonial) breakouts below.

 

Pennsylvania              (      220)

–220  Philadelphia.    Finger. “Yellow Fever.” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.

–220          “                Grob. The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America. 2002, p. 76.

–220          “                Keating 1879, p. 77.

–220          “                Kelly 1906, 83.

–220          “                NYT  “Yellow Fever,” 1888;

–220          “                Marine-Hospital Service. Annual Report…Fiscal Year 1895. 1896, 428.[1]

–220          “                Sternberg 1908, 19.[2]

 

South Carolina          (170-311)        (Especially late August to early Fall)

–170-311  Blanchard tally.[3] of 160-180 in Charleston proper and another 10-11 in countryside.

—     >300  Charleston. Grob. The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America. 2002, p. 76.

–160-180  Charleston. Kohn. Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence… 2001, p. 61.

—       160  Charleston. SC Dept. Health & Environ.

—    10-11  Charleston countryside. Kohn. Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence… 2001, p. 61.

 

Narrative Information

 

Augustin: “…yellow fever is an American product, was unknown to Europeans previous to the discovery of America by Columbus, and that Mexico, Central America and the West Indies may be considered as the original cradle of the awesome scourge.” (Augustin. History of Yellow Fever, 1909, p. 357)

 

Charleston, SC

 

Grob: “The first epidemic in the colonies occurred in Boston in 1693 following the arrival of British vessels from Barbados. Six years later [1699] yellow fever appeared in Charleston and Philadelphia. In Charleston as many as 300 persons perished, and with one exception all were white. One correspondent found it difficult to describe ‘the terrible Tempest of Mortality’ in the city. The ‘high and low, old and young’ perished. The dead were piled into carts, business activity came to a virtual standstill, and little was done except to carry medicines and dig graves.” (Grob. The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America. 2002, p. 76.)

 

Kohn: “First positively identified yellow fever epidemic that ravaged the city of Charleston, South Carolina. The outbreak began in late August 1699 and killed between 160 and 180 city dwellers and another 10 or 11 people who resided in the country. According to a private correspondent, 125 English, 37 French, 16 Indians, and one black died of yellow fever in Charleston (first called Charles Towne) during the late summer and early fall of 1699. Since accurate population statistics of Charleston are unavailable for this time period, it is impossible to determine the exact percentage of fatalities; however, estimates range from 3 to 7 percent.

 

“….Government and business activity came to a near standstill until November, when the epidemic finally ended….

 

“Before yellow fever was identified as such in 1699, it was known as ‘Barbados Fever’ or ‘black vomit.’ In Charleston in 1699, physicians recognized the symptoms, which were yellow-tinted skin accompanied by severe vomiting, usually black, resulting from internal hemorrhages, but they did not understand the causes of yellow fever. Doctors did understand that the disease occurred from July to November, with the most serious outbreaks during August and September…

 

“Further reading: Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America; Fraser, Charleston! Charleston!; Ramsay, Ramsay’s History of South Carolina.” (Kohn. Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence… 2001, p. 61.”

 

Ramsay: “In the year 1699 or 1700, in addition to the calamities resulting from a desolating fire and  fatal epidemic of small pox, a distemper broke out in Charlestown which carried off an incredible number of people, among whom were Chief-Justice Bohun, Samuel Marshal, the Episcopal clergyman, John Ely, the Receiver-General, Edward Rawlins, the Provost-Marshal, and almost one-half of the members of Assembly. Never had the colonies been visited with such general distress and mortality. Some whole families were carried off, and few escaped a share of the public calamities….Many of the survivors seriously thought of abandoning a country on which the judgments of heaven seemed to fall so heavy. Dr. Hewatt, from whom the preceding account is taken, designates this malady by the general appellation of ‘an infectious distemper.’ It was generally called the plague by the inhabitants. From tradition, and other circumstances, particularly the cotemporaneous existence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, there is reason to believe that this malady was the yellow fever; and if so, was the first appearance of that disorder in Charlestown, and took place in the nineteenth or twentieth year after it began to be built.” (Ramsay’s History of South Carolina, From its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808. 1858, p. 46.)

 

SC Dept. of Health & Environment: “A most infectious pestilential and mortal distemper…which from Barbados or Providence was brought in among us in Charles Town about the 28th or 29th of Aug. last past….This Distemper from the time of its beginning aforesaid to the first day of November killed in Charles Town at least 160 persons.” Among the victims were the “chief justice, receiver-general, provost marshal, and almost half of the assembly.”” (SCDHEC)[4]

 

Philadelphia, PA

 

Grob: “In Philadelphia 220 died out of a population of about 4,400.” (Grob. The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America. 2002, p. 76.)

 

Sources

 

Augustin, George. History of Yellow Fever. New Orleans: Published for the Author by Search & Pfaff Ltd., 1909; General Books reprint, Memphis, TN, 2010. 1909 copy digitized at: http://archive.org/stream/historyofyellowf00auguuoft#page/n4/mode/1up

 

Finger, Simon. “Yellow Fever.” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Accessed 9-11-2016 at: http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/yellow-fever/

 

Grob, Gerald N. The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America. Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College, Harvard University Press, 2002. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=U1H5rq3IQUAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Keating, J. M. A History of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tenn. Memphis, TN: Howard Association, 1879. Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=WEIJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Kelly, Howard A. (Professor of Gynecological Surgery, Johns Hopkins University). Walter Reed and Yellow Fever. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1906, 299 pages. Google digitalized at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=qUgJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Kohn, George Childs (Ed.). “Charleston Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1699,” p. 61 in Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence From Ancient Times to the Present (Revised Edition). NY: Checkmark Books, 2001.

 

Marine Hospital Service of the United States. Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1895. Washington: GPO, 1896. Google preview accessed 1-10-2018 at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

New York Times. “Yellow Fever Retrospect.” 10-7-1888. Accessed at:  http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D03EFD81F38E033A25754C0A9669D94699FD7CF&oref=slogin

 

Ramsay, David (M.D.). Ramsay’s History of South Carolina, From its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808. Published by W. J. Duffie, Newberry, SC, printed in Charleston by Walker, Evans & Co., 1858. Digitized by archive.org and accessed 9-11-2016 at: https://archive.org/stream/ramsayshistorys00ramsgoog#page/n4/mode/2up

 

South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. Public Health History (website). “A Chronology of the History of Public Health in South Carolina.” Accessed October 9, 2008 at: http://www.scdhec.net/administration/history/timeline.htm

 

Sternberg, George M. (US Public Health Service, US Marine Hospital Service). “Yellow Fever:  History and Geographic Distribution.” Pages 715-722 in Stedman, Thomas L., M.D. (Ed.) Appendix to the Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences. NY: William Wood & Co., 1908.  Google digitized: http://books.google.com/books?id=3ezqX415M5wC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

United States Marine-Hospital Service, Treasury Department. Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1895 (Document No. 1811). Washington, DC: GPO, 1896. Digitized by Google at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

 

[1] “220 out of 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants died of yellow fever, called at the time the Barbados fever, because it was brought by a ship from that island. (Bally, after Lytler, American Registers, Vol. I; R. La Roche, Ch. M.J. and Rev., 1852, p. 58, Toner.).”

[2] Sternberg notes that this is out of a population estimated to have been “…less than four thousand inhabitants.”

[3] For low-end of  range we add 160 deaths in Charleston and 10 deaths in surrounding countryside (170). For high-end we use Grob’s number of “as many as 300” deaths in Charleston and 11 for surrounding countryside ( 311).

[4] Cites: Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America, 1953, p. 143.