John Harvey Powell (1914–1971)
Autore di Bring out your dead; the great plague of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793
Sull'Autore
Opere di John Harvey Powell
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Nome canonico
- Powell, John Harvey
- Data di nascita
- 1914
- Data di morte
- 1971
- Sesso
- male
Utenti
Recensioni
Liste
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 10
- Utenti
- 215
- Popolarità
- #103,625
- Voto
- 3.8
- Recensioni
- 2
- ISBN
- 16
It centers largely around Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and overall pretty fascinating individual. He was mentioned in "Mad in America", my first read of the year, and several times in my smallpox books as an inoculator.
He survived a war and smallpox, but the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 shook him. He was the one to officially recognize and announce its arrival to the Fellows committee, directly influencing city policy. Despite Mayor Matthew Clarkson's unwavering support, Rush watched as friends and colleagues succumbed to it. There are extensive, if ineffective descriptions of various medical and folk treatments and unnerving tales of panic and familial desertion. We know today that it comes from the mosquito not "noxious effluvia." Searching all written accounts, Dr. Franklin gives Rush a description of yellow fever from 1741. It encouraged extreme purging as treatment and somehow it works... or so Rush's ego would have him believe...
But the real MVPs of this tragic part of history are members of Philadelphia's black community. "From among the poorest and most despised came some of the most heroic." Absalom Jones and Richard Allen of the African Society supply nurses, members offer to be trained by Rush (an abolitionist) and the Society goes into debt from paying for coffins for the poor. They wrote a vivid account entitled "A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, during the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia" With them, are the newly arrived immigrants from France coming through Philadelphia's port that bring their medical knowledge and ultimately out-perform Dr. Rush in their successful treatments!… (altro)