6 - Strangers' Disease

Summary

Our knowledge of this fever is very limited. It appears that there is a certain something in the air of Charleston that is comparatively harmless to the inhabitant, but the source of disease and death to the stranger. What is that something?

David Ramsay, September 1799

At Madame D'Orvals they have sent to the hospital. The poor Irish woman they say with the yellow fever – she waited on them; perhaps she will die there by strangers buried and by strangers mourned.

Vanderhorst diary entry, September 1838

“CHARLESTON'S YELLOW FEVER”

“The mortality is beyond anything known for many years. There are very few strangers … escaping. Those who did not make a seasonable flight have found an untimely grave in a land which they had visited for wealth or pleasure.” The author of these words, Joshua Whitridge, was describing an epidemic of yellow fever in Charleston in 1817. Whitridge was himself a stranger, a doctor who had recently migrated from New England, perhaps lured like others by the fact that the city had been virtually free of the fever since 1807. He had just recovered from the disease and was treating its victims with great success, or so he claimed. Whitridge's observations and experiences reflected the new view of yellow fever as mainly a disease of people who had recently come to the city. Although some came for “wealth or pleasure” most were poor folk looking for work.