Mathew Carey
- Events
- 1
- Episodes
- 5
- Years
- 1793–1795
Every event in Historedia whose sources name Mathew Carey, with the role they cite and all of that event’s episodes. This is not a biography, and mentions are grouped by name, so two people with the same name can share this page.
Events and episodes
Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic
1793–1795Role: Chronicler who published a 1793 account of the epidemic
- Rush identifies the fever and applies therapies
Benjamin Rush recognized the yellow fever pattern after two weeks of rising cases and treated patients with bleeding and purging, teaching African-American nurses these methods.
- Refugee arrivals and the onset of epidemic
French colonial refugees from Saint-Domingue crowded Philadelphia's port, where the city's first yellow fever epidemic in thirty years began in early August 1793.
- Mortality and the official death register
An official register listed more than 5,000 deaths among Philadelphia's 50,000 citizens between August 1 and November 9, 1793, a total probably understated.
- Civic relief efforts and the Mayor's Committee
A citizens' committee appointed on September 14, 1793 relieved the sick and distressed; Mathew Carey contrasted volunteers' sacrifices with others' selfishness.
- Aftermath: quarantine, philanthropy, and debate
The epidemic prompted Philadelphia's Lazaretto quarantine hospital in 1799, Anne Parrish's 1795 relief society, and later medical debates over contagion and mosquito transmission.
- Rush identifies the fever and applies therapies
Sources
- 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-24