Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: How Yellow Fever (Nearly) Destroyed Philadelphia

Episode Date: March 6, 2020

This week on Sawbones, it's the story of how Yellow Fever killed 10 percent of Philadelphia, destroyed the government and made everyone rethink their collection of decorative standing water.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with the two in that's lost it out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Come that essence, come that essence, the escalant macaque for the mouth Hello everybody and welcome to solvones a marital tour of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin Aquiline and I'm Sydney McRoy well, Sid There's nothing we love Here on solvones more than a combo We used to have these combo streaks that would last like three to four episodes long So last week, I'm talking about quarantine through the lens of coronavirus. You stumbled upon a story of a different sort of quarantine. Well, sort of. quarantine is one aspect of it as I was as I was looking through different examples of quarantining events. I guess just quarantines.

I love that. I'll just make up some new terms while I'm talking there. As I was looking through examples of quarantines, I stumbled across one that I had never heard of and it led me to the story of a certain episode of like a disease outbreak in American history that is a pretty famous one. And somehow we've never talked

about and I don't know I wasn't really I was vaguely aware of the concept of this sort of thing happening at this time period but I did not know this exact story. We have performed in the city multiple times. That's right. That happened upon this specific incident. No, and I had the moment where I thought if we're going to go back to Philadelphia, I should save this story for when we go there. But then that seemed silly to not talk about it in the hopes that eventually we'd go back to Philadelphia and wait until then.

Oh, listen, we'll be back to Philadelphia. Oh, I know we will, but they have these Amish donuts there. Not yours, but right off your face. This was such a good story though. So I wanted to talk about the Philadelphia yellow fever outbreak of 1793. It seems like Gritty probably started it. I don't know how that's chronologically possible, but my early guess is that this is a gritty centric,

gritty was patient zero. I'm gonna guess that you don't know much about yellow fever. If that's your theory. Okay. I don't think we've talked much about yellow fever on the show. No. No. No.

One, so the thing about yellow fever, and this is probably one of the most notable outbreaks, although there was a time when yellow fever outbreaks were not uncommon in the United States. And we think about, I think a lot of us Americans think about yellow fever as like a tropical disease. It doesn't happen here. It still occurs very frequently in parts of Africa and South America. And it's not gone. We're not talking about smallpox here. This has not been eradicated. I would guess that a lot of us Americans have fully formed

in cogent opinions and thoughts on yellow fever. Much like myself, everyday American. Do you... I got the vaccine. I said... I have had the yellow fever vaccine because I went to Malawi. Squid, listen, listen, are you listening?

Yes. Do you remember earlier when you said that we have not done much on yellow fever? Yes. What that translates to one to one is that I don't know anything about yellow fever. I'm a blank canvas, okay? Okay, okay? Okay. Okay. Well, yellow fever is a virus. I have in my notes,

it's an RNA virus as if you would have asked me, is it a DNA or an RNA virus? Sorry, I wasn't listening to what you just said a second sentence ago. I didn't have a question before you move on. Is it a DNA or an RNA virus? It is spread by mosquitoes. I had a pneumonic device to remind me. Let me see for you. Yellow fever is our in A is not applicable. So the R is red not applicable. It's yellow fever. Red, not applicable, it's yellow, fever. Virus. Yeah, got it. Got it.

So it's spread by mosquitoes, usually the 80s type of mosquito. It's a flame of virus. The 80s type of mosquito. It's got the little neon, scratchy, and gene jacket. It's related to viruses like West Nile. You've probably heard of West Nile virus.

That was very big in the media for like five minutes a while back. Right, I remember that. We were all very upset at mosquitoes, which we should be all the time. They're the most dangerous animal on earth. They are. We should all be very scared of mosquito.

No, don't be scared. That's not production. But we should be upset about mosquitoes. Be cautious and aware and vigilant. If you see something. Or a village, that's not a word But we'll be upset about mosquitoes. Be cautious and aware and vigilant. If you see something. Or, that's not a word, but be vigilant. If you see mosquito, say, mosquito, that's my rule. It is transmitted between monkeys and mosquitoes, and then occasionally a human wanders into

the jungle and gets in the midst of this cycle. And then it's transmitted at that point from human to mosquito to human to mosquito to human. Thanks for nothing Tarzan. So it's one of those that you can see why back in 1793 it would be tricky to figure out how it was spread because it really is something that it takes you a minute to it's not if you and me are sitting in the same room and I have yellow fever, you're not gonna get yellow fever for me,

unless there's also a mosquito in this room. And then it is necessary for them to get it to first feast on me and then feast on you for you to get it. That's a tricky transmission. If you, I mean, like it seems common sense now because we know that a lot of things, malaria, being probably the biggest, you know, example, spread that right. I'm not saying quite the poll when they actually did finally figure that out.

That's what a wild extractor that is. It's a big, it's a big breaker. Most people who get yellow fever virus will not know. I think that's something that we never talk about with viruses is how often a lot of people will get something and never know they got it. And we could check and see that they've had it before, but you just didn't get symptoms. I know. It seems strange. You feel like everybody should get sick with something.

But now... So when you look at a virus and they look at this weird time and heads with their weird little spindly legs, they look very dangerous. That's a bacteria phase. Yeah, tomato and mono. Yeah. Well, legs, they look very dangerous. That's a bacteria phase. Yeah, a tomato motto. Yeah, well, most don't look that way. Those are very impressive viruses I agree. They look very scary and cool.

They're on your cover of virus beat, hunky viruses that we are crushing on. I do have a necklace with a little bacteria phase, charm, because they're very cool, but most unfortunately, unfortunately, most don't look that way. Some people will develop symptoms in about three to six days after they're exposed, they'll get feverish chills, headaches, back pain, body aches, nausea vomiting, fatigue, feel weak, that kind of thing. Last about a week for most

people and then usually they get better, although some people can go on longer. But for about one in seven of the people who get sick, so already like most people who get it won't get sick. One some percentage of those people will get sick and then one in seven of those people will seem to get better for a day or two, like the week will pass and you'll think, wow, great, I got better, get a fever over. But then things get really worse. You get the fever's back, but now your liver is affected. That's where the yellow comes in.

You become jaundiced, you can turn yellow. Your organs can fail. You can have, because your liver is involved, you lose the ability to clot your blood. So it can be a very dramatic into the disease process because you start bleeding a lot from a lot of places. So much like it's not like Ebola but reminiscent of why people were so afraid of Ebola. Ebola does not cause you to disintegrate by the way.

I don't know who would have said that kind of thing. Yeah, I don't. Maybe a world leader perhaps, maybe a world leader that we may be familiar with in the United States of America, but anyway, it does not cause you to disintegrate on a side note. But it can't, but yellow fever can cause you to die in about 30 to 60% of the people who get this, this very severe complicated course will die. Nowadays, we don't, like I said, we don't see it here, but it is still a big issue, this very severe complicated course will die. Nowadays, we don't, like I said, we don't see it here, but it is still a big issue,

another part to the world in parts of Africa and South America. But back in the 1700s, especially in the newly formed US, you would see it fairly frequently because a large part of that was that a lot of people were coming to the United States and we didn't have so in order for you to have the breeding grounds for the mosquitoes, that's the key here. What you really need are a lot of like pools of stagnant water. So you got to have

the right kind of mosquito which could which can did and can survive in These climates no Inclimates. Yeah, it makes more sense You have to you have to have you know, you have to have the right mosquito which we can have in this area of the world And you have to have places for that mosquito to breed and so like that's why you see the association with parts of maybe the developing world where That's why you see the association with parts of maybe the developing world where water sanitation isn't always at its best. And so if you look at, right now we're focusing on Philadelphia, there were all these marshy swampy areas that were great from mosquitoes.

And then when you look inside the cities themselves in early colonial America and then in early, you know, post-revolutionary America, you have just, I mean, things weren't clean. You didn't have like and back in those days, you would just get stoked because, hey, free water. That, I mean, it's amazing. And you didn't know about germs. If it looked dirty, you might not want to drink it, but if it looked okay, you would know. I have a way to free water in those days. You kidding me? Like, it's free. Excuse me. Is this water just for anybody? Because it's just here. OK, I'm taking it. Now, even then, if water looked obviously dirty, most people wouldn't have been straight ahead. It's free, but we didn't understand microbes.

It's wild and not taking. It's free. It's right there, anybody. But the yellow fever wasn't in the water to be clear. There were things in the water. Coloura was in the water. But the yellow fever was not in the water to be clear. There were things in the water. Coloura was in the water. But the yellow fever was not in the water. The yellow fever was in the mosquitoes with the mosquitoes lay their eggs and breed on the water. So that is key. One of the number one things you can do to

reduce mosquitoes and therefore the infectious diseases they carry in an area is just remove sanding water. Take it home with you. It's free. Well, just don't leave things sitting around like buckets with sandy water in them. Let's see, you got a free bucket now. Now we get stinking going. So the beginnings of this epidemic, the beginning was a ship. That is that is the thought. That is the it was traced back. And you know, we could, it's been pinned on like, they think a specific like ship with people from a specific part of the world that came to Philadelphia. Lots and lots of people were coming in and out.

That was a very active port, you know, from a lot of different places. And so again, this is the, and there were a lot of other places in the world where yellow fever was a problem. So the idea that we know exactly who brought it, maybe, maybe not. But there were lots of ships that docked in Philly from Africa and the Caribbean and places where there could have been at any given point in time active outbreaks of yellow fever.

This particular ship they think came from the French Caribbean colony of St. Domingue, which is now Haiti. And they at the time, the timing sort of worked that there was a yellow fever outbreak in what is now Haiti at that time. And so there were a lot of people who were there fleeing a revolution that was occurring. And then also, anytime there's a people, you're're gonna see the spread of these kinds of affections diseases So probably also this yellow fever epidemic all of this was going on so a lot of people came to Philadelphia Probably some of them were carrying yellow fever

Perhaps there even some mosquitoes flying around on board There's probably some pools of stagnant water in the ship. They're often were. Yeah. So that's ship life though. So the in the city like I said was surrounded by swamps and marshes. The dock creek was this open was like a was like a sewer and it was an open sewer that was right there. There's a sewer because it's called the creek. It's right there in the name. It's not called the duck sewer. You, you, as far as like your waist and stuff and Philadelphia at this time and it and not just, I'm not just knocking on Philly, like in a lot of major American cities, you had holes dug in the ground where you would just throw waste or like animal leftover bits and stuff.

And that over there, that's the, that's the yuck haul. Don't go near it. That's where you put all the yuck. Keep things. And it would, well, I mean, you would want to fill it up, I guess, before you had to go through the trouble of digging another hole. Right. And so you would leave it open and then rain would collect in it. Um, so, and then there, you also collected rain water at the time.

I mean, like we didn't have plumbing, right? For the most part, so you collected rain water and barrels outside. So what I'm painting for you is the picture of, we have these people coming who have yellow fever. We've got mosquitoes that can carry yellow fever. We've got lots of standing, gross water everywhere. It's perfect.

It was primed for yellow fever. And on top of that, it was August and the summer had been very dry. And as a result, the water table was really low. So you have even more like shallow pools of water surrounding the docks right where these ships were coming in. So as people got off and mosquitoes bit them and transmitted it to other people and then went and laid their eggs, you know, you get the idea.

There's mosquitoes everywhere. So they feasted on the infected passengers, they carried the infection out with them to Philadelphia, to the people of Philadelphia. The first person to die, Peter Aston, was examined and thought, well, we're heading into the fall. And the fall was known to be a time.

Again, this is back before we really understood infectious diseases very well. The miasma theory was still very popular. That like bad air, it was around, it was just around like bad airs and smells and things would like seep into an area and that if you could walk to the bad air out, fight it with good air, then you wouldn't get sick. So this was a time of year where you usually started to see the faevers, the fall faevers, the abdominal faevers, and those could have been any number of different infectious diseases

that started as the weather started to get cooler. And so at first they thought this guy had just died of one of the... Fault fever.Fault fever. That's false for you. Anyway, put them in the yuck hole. But within just a few days, several more people had died of a similar fever. And again, because if you get the most complicated course

of yellow fever, it is a very dramatic end with a lot of the, one of them, and I think we mentioned this can occur with Ebola too. One of the most notable is the black vomit that can occur at the end because you're hemorrhaging and vomiting. And so because of that, it was notable. And it called the attention of Benjamin Rush, who we've talked about for one of our founding fathers, father of psychiatry, notable physician who did some wax stuff.

Some wax things. Who had some good ideas and then some bad ones. It caught the attention of Benjamin Rush who examined the patients, recognized the pattern as one that he was unfortunately familiar with and announced to the terrified public that yellow fever had indeed struck Philly. What happened? Well, I'm going to tell you what happened. But first let's go to the billion department.

Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you make my cards for the mouth. So said Benjamin Rush has just made this stirring it out. So what happens next? Well general panic. So everybody freaked out. Everybody was terrified. Philadelphia at this time had around 50,000 people. And they were crammed in pretty close together. Like they were they were all on top of each other. So, you know, you'd have no idea how this disease spreads. People are living close together. People are dying in a, in a scary, dramatic fashion.

Um, they had no idea that the mosquitoes were involved. Nobody knew how to stop it. They're all laughing to themselves. The mosquitoes are like, they've got no clue. Perfect crime. Uh, and people got sick very, very quickly because nobody had any effective strategies as to what the heck do we do to stop it?

Some people would go hide inside. Some people just lock their doors. Like, I was prepping for this. I've got two weeks of canned food. I'm ready. Let's just standing water. That's it. Let's just standing water. It's listening. Let's just standing water.

It's like the little girl in signs in here. It's just full of standing water. It's like I can see. I've got plenty of mosquitoes in here. Yeah, so I've got my family mosquitoes to keep me company and entertain me and I've got plenty of standing water. Many others decided screw this noise.

I'm getting out of here. Overall, throughout the course of this illness, about 20,000 people would run from Philadelphia. There were 50,000 people in the city. That's so many people. That's so many people. So at the time, Congress, of course, was meeting in Philadelphia at this point in history at 1793 So Congress said We out

We're actually done Philadelphia. They moved out to Germantown and After they one morning a body was found lying on the state house steps pretty much all the other government officials left to in a sense the government of Philadelphia collapsed. Yes. During this outbreak. I don't mean to say like that was it. That was the end of Philadelphia.

There never was a Philadelphia again, but like I don't know. Clearly that's not true. If the government isn't there. Can you even call it a Philadelphia, there never was a Philadelphia again, but like, I don't know it. Clearly, that's not true. If the government isn't there, can you even call it a Philadelphia out there? I don't know what, I don't know, it does it exist. It's just a loose Confederacy of Philly's fans at that point. Everybody ran. The hospitals had trouble keeping staffed.

They were obviously a lot of, there was a lot of illness among people taking care of the sick. There was, they were overwhelmed quickly with the sick and people dying. And doctors and nurses started leaving because in a sense it was futile, they felt. They were working to try to take care of these people. They had no idea why they got sick or what this sickness was or what to do about it. I'm going to get into some of the treatments and you'll see why they were highly ineffective. And so, did you, they didn't want to just stand in the hospital and watch people die of a terrible thing. So a lot of them. Right. So a lot of them unfortunately left. Now Benjamin Rush, and we did a whole episode on him in the past. And so you can revisit

that if you don't know why he's kind of a, I don't want to say controversial figure. Most people tend to really like him. He just, he, he was a physician very typical of this time period and that he did a lot of things that were not really helpful or evidence based, because nobody knew what evidence was. But he had no intention of leaving to his credit. I will say that even though he had no real understanding of what the heck to do about yellow fever, he was courageous enough to stay and take care of people to the best of his abilities. And he did try. The number one thing the Benjamin rush like to do to people is bleed them. A classic. Now in a disease that could end with uncontrolled bleeding, I could see

where this would seem like a bad idea. And yes, it was a bad idea. Correct. So he he bled people profusely. He he thought that something that would make you poop a lot was a good idea And so he gave people a lot of like mercury-based compounds and things that would lead to diarrhea he He was a proponent of the measmatheria of disease and he Because of that, I will say even though his initial idea is to what could have caused it, was wrong. He actually thought it had to do with some coffee. There was a shipment of coffee that had been left at the Archstreet Wharf that was rotting. There was a big like rotting

putrid. I imagine this giant pile of coffee grounds, but that can't be right. It can't be right. It's like, yeah. In my head, that's what it is. It can't come over ground. That doesn't make any sense. In my head, that's why I've read this several times from different sources. I'm actually a big old like shell-so-resteen pile of coffee. Big old pile of folders, just rotting on a dock. But there was a big pile of coffee rotting at a dock

and that is what Benjamin Rush thought was responsible for the illness. That it because of the measement theory of disease that we have all this rotting coffee and it's gross and it smells and it's spreading this bad air throughout the city. And that- You need to say days restidnext to the big pile of part of coffee it was like can we just all for a second if you all take 10

minutes with me and just clean up the coffee this whole thing will be fixed just I want to get a broom you duck get a broom too let's get rid of this old sticky coffee sweep it into the water that we drink sleep it into the yuck hole so and and this was I will say that idea, the other idea that he came up with because he thought, because of this meaz, material, and because he thought I had to do with this rotting coffee, a lot of the things that he proposed were like, you know, all these unsanitary conditions, like all this open sewage and these rotting things like coffee or vegetables or whatever they were around the docks, and and all of this if we could clean all this up

It would probably be more it would probably be better for us and good in safe. That's true I mean these were true even though he didn't understand why and I mean compared to other you know leading thinkers of the time who are like I don't know just say some prayers. Yeah, because this is a curse upon us. At least this was an action people could take. And so he did tell people we need to clean things up and things like that, that probably, that was probably a good idea. He did recognize that weather played some part in it. And he was one of the first, like when it gets colder for some reason, it seemed to go away, which would be true because the mosquitoes die. But then he also said that he didn't think it was spread human to human. And intriguing, true, an intriguing

point, not directly human to human. Because many people blamed this one ship, you know, and these refugees for the infection, there was a lot of anger and violence directed at people who had come in from what is now Haiti. And he was, Rush was actually pretty quick to say that's not one that's not helpful into. They're really not the problem. The problem is that our city stinks and is dirty and gross. I know that it's as in the water. All the yet calls. That's our problem. It's not people coming here and you need to stop blaming them.

Yeah. Yeah. Again, revolutionary idea. So he advocated for cleaning up the docks, get all the bilge water out of ships, so all the stagnant pools of water, the set in ships, clean the sewers, wash the streets, not the really nice stagnant pools of water like the collectors items, right? So there's some of them they're saving for later. Just to show their friends. That stagnant pool was a gift from my mom, so I'm

not gonna say that away. He said, maybe we shouldn't build our houses so close together. Maybe we should empty our toilets more. Now, there were, for you to say, Doc, there were other recommendations that weren't quite as helpful that were tried throughout the time. Some of which were proposed by Dr. Rush and others were there were there were other physicians still in the city, not many, but there were other, some of their physicians. Smoking tobacco was thought to be helpful. Always is.

Clean your house with vinegar or clean a person with vinegar. Just to pass the time. And to try to stave off the fever. Right. You could carry a tarred rope. No. Cover the floors of your rooms with two inches of dirt. Oh, okay.

Replace it daily. Too much work, rather have the fever. That I don't know. Yeah. Garlic was thought to be helpful. Chewing on garlic was popular, which would probably repel your friends, but mosquitoes, they don't care that much. No. You could hang a bag of camphor around your neck. That was a popular thing. And one man, this makes sense to setting off guns in the streets, setting off gunpowder,

explosions, we're thought to clear the air. And so that was a popular treatment. I just it's so shoot the germs just shoot some guns shoot it shoot the yellow fever. Tell his boss. Adding to the list of wrong ideas that Benjamin Rush had, he thought he had this idea that white people were more susceptible to yellow fever than black people. And as a result of this belief, he actually wrote an editorial begging the free black community to basically come to the aid of the sick. Like we need because, and he wrote from his medical opinion that they were not at risk of getting this the way that white people were, which as far as I can tell, he truly believed wrongly. Right, incorrect. But truly believed this. So he wrote, you know, please help. We're losing doctors, we're losing

nurses, we don't have anybody to bury bodies. We need help. And as a result of that, leaders of some of the local churches, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, who also started the Free African Society, called upon members of the black community to come forward and act as nurses and caregivers and gravediggers and moving sick bodies around and all this. And they were instrumental in providing aid

during this horrible disease outbreak. Yes, heroic, but of course, unfortunately, that was all inaccurate. There is no difference. There's no racial difference in terms of yellow fever. Everybody, when they've looked back at the numbers, it was all proportionate, you know, to the number of black people in the community, the same number died proportionately as white people.

But they did put themselves in harm's way to care for the sick and aid in the care of the sick. And that is one really important, kind of heroic aspect to the story of the South break, is how instrumental the free African society was. The city itself, the government came up with a number, came up with 11 different strategies that they proposed, probably on large part, the advice of Benjamin Rush, but other leaders, other medical leaders in the community. Here is how Philadelphia said, we're going to deal with this, which I think is interesting to see how we dealt historically with different outbreaks

since that is kind of what's happening now. One, avoid infected people. Sure. Yeah, good. Always good. Avoid fatigue and body in mind. Don't stand or sit in a drafter in the sun or in the evening air.

That's a lot of places. Yeah, that's so many places. No draft, no sun, no evening, got it. Three dress according to the weather and drink sparingly of wine, beer or cider. I don't know why that's all one rule. Deal. Yeah. Dress well, don't drink. Dress well, don't drink. That's rule three. We put that in one rule. Yeah. We want 11. For some reason, we need these. We need to combine these two rules. For when visiting the sick, use vinegar or camper. Okay. Five. Mark, every house was sickness in it.

Oh, good. That's pleasant. Yes. No, that no chance of that being misuse. No. Wouldn't, I don't think that would fly here. No, I don't. Not today. Six, place your patient in the center

of your biggest, ariest rooms in beds without curtains and change their clothes and bed linens often. There's halfway to something there. I mean, it would, I guess it would be nice. It's nice. Well, it's not gonna do anything. Changing their bed linens often, that's not bad. For them, no, that's not bad.

I don't know what you're doing is a city like that's that's so weird. If you think about it, this is a like an ordinance from the city. It's weird. Seven stop the tolling of the bells. No, good. Those are getting my nerves. Do you know why? Why? It is thought. Because this is a weird one, right? Why would we stop tolling the bells? I don't know. At once it says, stop the tolling of the bells at once. Because the bells told every time someone died. Oh. And I can imagine this would have been panic-inducing if all day long.

The bells are tolling. Oh, yeesh. So that's why the city did. I had nothing to do with disease spread. It was panic. Eight, bury the dead and close carriages.riages as privately as possible. You can see that nine clean the streets and keep them clean Ten stop building fires in your houses are on the streets. They have no useful effects Come on, however do burn gunpowder. Okay, it clears the air

And 11 most important of all at a large and airy hospital be provided near the city to receive four people Stringing with the disease who cannot otherwise be cared for. Good. I don't know how the people of Philadelphia were supposed to do that. I mean, like, I guess, unless you take it literally, let it, like, don't stop while we're building it. Stop. Everybody grab a break and come help us build this hospital.

Come help us build a hospital. Come on. We made a rule about how we need a hospital. Come on. Somebody do it. I like we need a hospital. No, somebody do it. I like that. Maybe it was like the secret. It is. They're visualizing.

They're putting out into the world a lot of attraction style. We're going to have a lasoretto. And they did. Now, we talked about the concept of lasoretto in our last episode, the quarantine hospitals. Hospitals set up specifically to deal with like that outbreak. You know, first it was plague, but now this would have been set up specifically to deal with yellow fever. There was a hospital bushel that had already been converted into a lasoretto. It was actually, it was funny, it was run by like this rich philanthropist who like opened it

to all the yellow fever patients and was like, here, you will receive the French treatment. And the French treatment was that you got a lot of wine and lemonade and we are very clean. Sounds good. It was actually so popular that after a while, people had to start proving that they had yellow fever before they were allowed in because so many people tried to get in. Get on that free wine and lemonade. To even though they didn't have yellow fever. The outbreak did end before they were able to establish this brand new Lazaredo that they had dictated must be built

because there was an old Lazaredo but it was not functioning very well because it was pretty close to the city. And so the idea is that like a ship would come in and make it like to the city. And so the idea is that like a ship would come in and make it like to the city basically before you'd have to stop at the quarantine station at the Lazaredo. And so there wasn't much point, wasn't very functional. But before they got the chance to do anything, the outbreak ended because the weather got colder. So October, a bunch

of mosquitoes died. And the case has started, you know, stopping, started stopping, started decreasing. There were some more infections after that, but not very many. And that was kind of the end of the worst of the outbreak. Prior to that, the high, that the death toll reach was 100 people per day. Overall, about 5,000 people, which was 10% of the city died in the epidemic.

It's a huge number, huge number. Now, just because the epidemic ended, did not mean that they forgot, EDIK number 11, that they had to build a hospital. It's right down the road, but. So because of that, everybody kind of after the government returned, thank goodness, and people stopped setting off gunpowder in the streets. Hopefully, they said, you know what, we really need a better quarantine facility to help prevent these kinds of outbreaks in the future, because we have no idea what caused it, but

we think it had something to do with the ship and the dock and something that was brought here. So they constructed a new Lazaredo, the Philadelphia Lazaredo, finished in 1799 as a result of this outbreak. It was this is why it was built. And it was in Tinnacom township further away. It's like, it's really near the airport. It's very close to where the airport is now,

in Philadelphia. But it was further near the airport. It's very close to where the airport is now, in Philadelphia. But it was further from the action, so to speak. And as ships would come in, you would have to stop there. And they had the main building where you would be like assessed for illness and the ship's captain would have to provide evidence of who was on board and where they came from and

Is anybody sick and what are you bringing and where's it from and all that kind of stuff And then they had different buildings within the compound. They had a place where like merchandise and goods could be stored if there was concern They had a place where um They had the dead house you can probably guess what that was for sure You probably piece that together To come together and swap tapes and stuff. They had the Dutch hospital, which was specifically for German immigrants at one point because of they had some concern. I believe it was cholera, but it became known as the Dutch hospital Pennsylvania Dutch German. But they had different buildings on the compound

and it was all run by doctors and quarantine masters whose job it was to try to, if there was something coming on one of these ships that could make people sick, stop it there, keep them at the Lazaredo until everybody either got better or didn't, and then let them into Philadelphia. And what's interesting is that it has been called the Ellis Island of Philadelphia So busy was this quarantine station

Like a third of the American population their ancestors probably passed through This quarantine station That's a wild number is wild. And it still stands today. You can still go see the Philadelphia, Lazzarredo. Cool. Yeah, it's still there. It's still like a historical site.

I believe it was restored recently, maybe even just last year, so that it can be visited again. It closed. It's been closed since 1895, but it is, but it still stands there today. It is the oldest Standing quarantine facility. I know in the US. So

What a distinction. Yeah, and you can still go see it today. Folks, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We appreciate you. We hope you've enjoyed yourself today. You've learned something you've been edified I'm gonna let you know we got some shows coming up. If you want to see us perform live, you may do so. April 1st we're gonna be in Boston at the Orphium Theater, April 3rd. We're gonna be at the Grand Theater at Fox Woods in Connecticut. We bought some more 20 second of April. We're gonna to be at the HIPAA Drome and North folk Virginia April 24th at Chrysler Hall. You can get to all those shows at bit.ly4th-20 funny and we hope you'll come see us. Some of those shows are selling out so act fast and

come see us live. If you've got if you're in those areas, you got show suggestions for like local medical topics in my way. Yeah, please do. There's always help so much. And thank you. I know some people have already started to send me those. Thank you so much for thinking of doing that and being proactive.

It really helps me out. I believe, oh, we need to say thanks to the taxpayers for these their song medicines as the intro and outro program. Thanks to you for listening. We'll be back with you again next week. Until then, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy.

It's always don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!