The Chattanooga Public Library is hosting “Politics of Yellow Fever in Alexander Hamilton’s America,” a traveling exhibit produced and made available by The National Library of Medicine. The exhibit will be on display on the first floor of the Downtown Library through Saturday, Feb. 17.
“Politics of Yellow Fever” explores how the yellow fever outbreak in 1793 Philadelphia influenced politics, future outbreaks and the development of the nation’s public health infrastructure.
Visitors can learn about the 1878 outbreak of Chattanooga through a companion display from the library’s Local History & Genealogy Department and a presentation about Father Patrick Ryan, a hero of the local epidemic.
“The history of disease tells us a lot about the human experience,” says Jessica Sedgwick, the library’s head of Local History & Genealogy. “The experience of yellow fever in Chattanooga was devastating, but it was also an amazing moment when people looked out for each other.”
In 1793, yellow fever ravaged Philadelphia. Within a month, the city, state and federal governments had essentially stopped functioning. Everyone from elite physicians to medical quacks, and private citizens to elected officials, had an opinion about the fever, says Sedgwick.
“After scientists confirmed that mosquitoes can transmit yellow fever and other diseases, mosquito control emerged as an important public health measure,” Sedgwick adds. “The quantity and variety of writing on yellow fever indicates the extent to which it occupied the thoughts of American physicians and shaped the development of the nation’s public health infrastructure.”
The traveling exhibition and companion website (www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/politicsofyellowfever/index.html) explore how party politics shaped the response to the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. While citizens confronted yellow fever in the absence of an effective cure or consensus about the origins of the disease, medical professionals, early political parties and some individuals advanced their respective agendas.
As a result, Philadelphia’s sick and dying received medical care informed as much by politics as by the best available science, Sedgwick says.