Dr jean deveze biography of abraham

Yellow fever is a mosquito-borne viral disease, which causes fever, chills, muscle pain, nausea, and in serious cases, liver damage, which leads to the skin and eyes of its victims taking on its namesake yellow color.

The cause of yellow fever wouldn’t be confirmed until 1900; in the 18th century opinions were divided between those who thought it was person-to-person contagious and those who thought it was caused by contaminated air, known as miasma.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito favors prefers warmer climates, so yellow fever was not endemic to Philadelphia. The last major Philadelphia outbreak had been in 1762, but the disease-carrying mosquitoes were carried there in 1793 by ships from the Caribbean.

The first cases emerged in July and early August and on August 19 Benjamin Rush officially diagnosed the epidemic as yellow fever.

As the disease (and and news about it) spread, residents with the means began to flee the city, along with the state and f