Valentine Seaman, An Account of the Epidemic Yellow Fever, 1796, Evans 31169.

[3] Musquetoes were never before known, by the oldest inhabitants, to have been so numerous as at this season, especially in the southeastern part of the city; they were particularly troublesome to foreigners, many of whom, had those parts of their bodies that were exposed to them, covered with blisters from their venomous operations...

[4]....Dr. Treat was taken on the 22d of the seventh month, and died on the 30^th, Several other undoubted cases occurred, about this time, in the neighborhood of Dover-street, but the first one of that came under my particular observation, was that of James Dalton on the 12th of the eighth month, then in the fifth day of his illness, of which he died the day following as yellow as gold. From this time the disease became more and more frequent; yet as we find by the accurate accounts of the Health Committee, not above two a day upon an average died of it, till the 24th of the month.

The increasing prevalence of the epidemic at the upper part of Water-street and in Cherry-street, and in all the neighboring low ground between them and Chatham and the lower part of George-streets, in [5] the forepart of the ninth month, became so alarming as to drive many of the most opulent of their inhabitants to the country, while the less prudent and the more indigent remained exposed to a disease, which, from this limited spot, in less than three months, carried as many as five hundred to their graves.

The disease was not, however, confined entirely to this part of the city; for in every other situation, favoring the accumulation of filth and stagnation of putrefactive materials, there it was no stranger: it raged with peculiar violence in the vicinity of a most intolerable pent up sink, to the west of Peck-slip, which is the receptacle for all the refuse kitchen articles, and yard wash of a number of lots fronting Pearl and Water-streets, that back upon it; it was likewise very prevalent in the neighborhood of the Fly-market, also in and about Skinner-street, as well as in some of the unregulated grounds on the north side of the town.

If an account of the epidemic, as it pervaded the different parts of the town, could be accurately ascertained, and depicted in colors, heightened in proportion to the combined early time of attack, and the numbers affected, blazoned by its comparative malignity, there can be no manner of doubt, but that the low ground in the southeast of the city as above mentioned, would appear as the grand center of the calamity, diffusing its effects, like diverging rays, to the adjacent parts; aiding by its most powerful influence, different secondary centers, already smoking hot, to flame out its pestiferous operations. The many solitary cases of the disease that have occurred in distant healthy situations, appear to have been kindled up by imprudent individual exposures too near these sources of infection. [6]

The black people appeared to be as subject to the disease as the whites, but it was not so fatal to them; of eight that I prescribed for, only one died, and with her, the complaint having stolen in under the deceitful form of a common cynanche, was permitted to run on for some days, before medical aid was called for. By report of Dr. S. L. Mitchell, in behalf of a committee of the Manumitting Society of this city, it appears that not a single scholar of the free black school, under their patronage, died with it.

Several circumstances tended to render the disease particularly fatal to the more indigent part of the community: 1st. The higher price of house-rent in the other parts of the city, having concentrated a great portion of them in the epidemic neighborhood, and crouded them in small confined apartments; a number of houses contained as many families as it had rooms in it. 2d Their poverty not permitting them to quit their place of residence when the disease came around them. 3d The great difficulty of getting nurses, and their exorbitant prices preventing them from getting proper attendance before their situation became known to the Committee of Health....

After giving a brief history of the epidemic, Seaman examines its causes beginning by quoting his own August 6 letter to the Health Committee reporting on conditions in the city:

[33] ....That putrifying substances, after a continuation of very warm weather, will give rise to such complaints; the fatal operation of the dock mud deposited at Peck-slip in 1791, the putrid coffee in Philadelphia in 1793, and the noxious exhalations from the creek in New-Haven in 1794, sufficiently prove, without the aid of many other equally certain, though more remote facts, that might be adduced in its support if necessary.

On these principles I have been led to search into this part of the town, for the cause of the present complaint, and I believe my inquiries have not been in vain: I suspect that I have discovered a fruitful matrix generating the seeds of this complaint, and which if not properly cared for, may possibly spread mortality in its vicinity.

A few years ago the Corporation have had Water-street, between the two before mentioned slips, filled up, without obliging the proprietors of the property on the north side of the street and in Cherry-street, to fill up their yards even to a level with it. Hence, the refuse water and offal substances, from the families occupying these places, are left to stagnate and putrify; and what renders it particularly distressing, is, that the healthful showers, that in general wash away all such matters from other places, here only tend to render them more active; for by the water not running off, it dissolves [34] and prepares them, thus pent up, for entering into their pestilential fermentation. Our regular and heavy rains, have perhaps been one great remote cause of the frequency of these distressing diseases, in this neighborhood at this season.

It may be worthy of remark, that many of these tenements contain several familes, hence an additonal cause for putrefactive materials....

The causes of the disease as above suggested, not being removed, its effects, in full support of my apprehension, truly "spread great mortality in the vicinity," as is seen by its history in the foregoing observations.

This early idea of the origin of the epidemic, constantly gained confirmation from the manner in which it increased: it appeared to be almost entirely confined to the level south-eastern part of the town, and there it was the most general and fatal, in the particular situations that mostly abounded with these [35] pools of putrefactive exhalations. Thus it first became most general in and about the lower end of Dover-street: this is what might reasonably be looked for when we consider that besides all the lots fronting this street being sunk beneath the common level of it, there are also on the dock at its lower end several store-houses and granaries, built partly over water with piles, without having space under them filled up; the foundation of some of them, on the sides fronting the water are partitioned up so as to prevent the free circulation of the tide from washing away anything from under them; however, these partitions were not so tight but they let in water sufficient to favor the fermentation of the putrefactive materials that such a common receptacle will always collect, not only from exterior sources, but also from the showers of grain that frequently would pour down through holes that the rats sometimes would gnaw in the floor. Hence there can be no wonder, that the seeds of this disease should ripen in such a hot bed of putrefaction, aided by the effluvia emitted from the great flats of mud in the several surrounding impaired docks, left bare during the recess of every tide. It is remarked that several persons employed in a large grain store house, thus situated over such a source of noxious miasmata, were among the first victims of the disease.

The disease soon increased; numbers were taken in every part of that quarter of the town, lying between the upper part of Water, Pearl and Chatham-streets, and across the lower part of George-street. From an attention to the subject not only during the hurry of the epidemic, but also since its extinction, I am led to believe according to my best judgment, that four fifths of all the lots in this affected part of the city, were situated below the level [36] of the streets they fronted, whence from our regular rains, they very generally became stagnant, putrid mud puddles. I can hardly think it possible, was it not for the obstruction of the houses preventing a free observation of these grounds, that any candid person acquainted with the common causes of fevers could harbor the least doubt after walking through this part of the town, but that the epidemic originated from this source, rendered active by the continued excessive heat of the sun during the last summer. It raged with peculiar violence in the parts that were near the docks; this is what might be expected from the additional vapor of the dock mud as above-mentioned. It also was very fatal in a part of George street "not less than sixty persons were buried out of it with the small compass of twenty houses." This was probably owing to the poisonous steams discharged from large quantities of street dirt and manure, collected during the summer and deposited near the head of it, subjoined by the common causes above-mentioned. Its fatality to the west of Peck-slip was induced, no doubt, by the noxious vapors from the putrid sink there. The reason of its prevalence about the Fly-market, can seem no ways strange to any one acquainted with the situation of that place, the market being built over an offensive sewer, whose exhalations were confined only by an imperfect board floor to which may be added, the effluvia constantly arising from the putrefying animal and vegatable matter all around, as well as from the slip that puts in at it. Skinner-street is lowly situated, unpaved and very imperfectly drained....