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“How to spell Aedes aegypti, the world's one-stop, viral-disease-transmitting mosquito: T-R-O-U-B-L-E.” ― T.K. Naliaka. There have been many outbreaks of yellow fever, but the 1793 epidemic in Philadelphia was definitely a notable one. Three points of the fever are yellow fever itself, doctors treating yellow fever, and the impact it had on society.

Yellow fever is a disease you can get from an aedes aegypti mosquito’s bite. The acute phase symptoms include fever, headache, muscle pain, vomiting, and sensitivity to light. The toxic phase symptoms (which only about 30% of unfortunate fever victims reach) include vomit of blood, yellowing of skin and eyes, vomit of stomach acids, red eyes, comas or seizures, liver or kidney failure, and in many cases that reach the toxic phase, even death. It affected anybody exposed to mosquitos.

People thought that it was caused by rotting coffee or bad smells, but they were wrong. It was actually caused by, as already stated, aedes aegypti mosquitoes that bred near Philadelphia, it was transmitted when a human that had yellow fever was bitten by an uninfected mosquito, giving that mosquito yellow fever. People tried to repel this disease by burning tar, shooting guns, firing cannons, splashing themselves with vinegar, and even drinking vinegar.

The epidemic was attempted to be stopped by doctors but only the cold of the winter actually stopped the reproduction of the disease and mosquitos. Doctor Benjamin Rush was one of the top doctors in 1793 and had the very best education possible, and he had also been through another yellow fever outbreak many years before and he thought he knew how to deal with yellow fever. His way he thought would cure yellow fever was through bleeding where the doctor would remove blood to clear it of the so-called “pestilence” . Doctor Jean Deveze was a military doctor from France who made it to America as a refugee from modern-day Haiti. His medical way of dealing with yellow fever was by keeping the patient wet, hydrated, and cold. The more correct method was definitely Dr. Deveze.

The effect yellow fever had on the population was horrible and terrifying. In total the disease killed five thousand people at least. It caused business to slow to a stop because the sellers were terrified and closed their shops for a while. How it affected families was horrifying. The people were so scared that when someone was even suspected of having yellow fever in their families, some people would be willing to throw them out of their house to die.  

Another few yellow fever outbreaks happened after this one and they were in New York and New Orleans. One of the amounts of deaths in these outbreaks was very high, and the other outbreak was lower than Philadelphia's amount of deaths, the New York death count was seven hundred thirty dead and the New Orleans death count was over eight thousand people. What’s funny but also sort of sad is that New York refused to take in yellow fever refugees from Philadelphia, and soon after that they had their own epidemic. Something about the New Orleans outbreak that is interesting is that when it happened, the people burned tar to try to get rid of the disease.

The book “FEVER 1793” was a very good book, it can make the reader feel as if they went through the epidemic itself. Though the characters were not real (mostly) the book stayed closely according to how the epidemic happened. This epidemic compares to the recent COVID-19 pandemic because nobody knew a cure and everything shut down for a while. It contrasts it because back then they didn’t have the items we have nowadays for figuring out the cause, whereas we found out how to make our vaccines for protection against COVID-19 within one and a half years and they didn’t for over a hundred years. Also our pandemic had way less deaths than their yellow fever epidemic, since ours mainly killed those who were weakened or those who already had health issues.

The yellow fever epidemic was bad, thousands died, even more barely recovered, and it spun a perfect town into a perfect nightmare. The fever was caused by mosquitos, the symptoms  were deadly and one of them was a coma. There were two phases, toxic and acute, toxic was rare, and then the mosquitos bred and replicated the virus, and the people used vinegar, which was a good idea against the mosquitos, to fend the “pestilence” off.

The doctors , Rush and Deveze, used bloodletting or cold and hydration to fight the disease. It hit anyone who was exposed to mosquitos. It was extremely deadly and killed five thousand people within one summer and autumn.

It shut down businesses for at least seven months and it scared off important people like Alexander Hamilton. It caused families to be ready to kill each other if one was even suspected in the slightest of having yellow fever. Other fever outbreaks were bad like the New York and New Orleans , though New York was better than both of the other ones, and had many deaths. The New Orleans one was the worst yellow fever epidemic in North America. The book yellow fever was according to how it happened (with added characters) and obviously Laurie Halse Anderson did her research.

The epidemic is like the COVID-19 pandemic because everybody lived in fear of a disease with an unknown cure. It was unlike COVID-19 because we eventually within about a year and a half figured out how to (sort of) cure COVID-19 whereas they took over a hundred years after this to find out how to make a vaccine to prevent it, one more thing is that our pandemic was much less deadly than their epidemic, and the only reason our pandemic had more deaths was because ours was on a global scale whereas theirs was specifically in one city. This was many facts about the epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia in the year 1793.