Image Print

Yellow Fever in Philadelphia, 1793

A near-contemporary drawing showing a bit of the panic and despair that must have accompanied the late summer and fall of 1793, when yellow fever tore through Philadelphia. (Note that it appears to show a man lying dead in the gutter.)

The yellow fever epidemic ultimately wound up claiming some 5,000 lives between August 1 and November 9, roughly one-tenth of the city's population at the time.

Item Type
Temporal Coverage
Neighborhood
Place
Format (Medium)

Drawing

File Size

94 kb

Image Dimensions

640 x 359 px

Transcription