Bush Hill
Books
- The Summer the Capital Emptied Yellow Fever, Race, and the Collapse of Philadelphia in 1793 · Liszt Think
In August 1793, yellow fever struck Philadelphia, then the nation’s capital. Within weeks, George Washington fled and half the city followed. Five thousand died before the first frost. Amid the exodus, Dr.
- The Arrival of the Hankey…e dying on the false belief that Black people were immune to the disease. Stephen Girard and the French physician Jean Devèze would run the Bush Hill hospital. A committee of citizens would govern the emptied city. The epidemic would expose every fault line in the new republic’s capital:…
- The Exodus Begins…Stephen Girard, the wealthy French-born merchant and banker, stayed. He would later take a central role in managing the crisis hospital at Bush Hill. But Girard was an exception. Most of his peers in the merchant class did not share his nerve or his sense of obligation. They closed their…
- With the Federal Government Gone…entually formalize the city’s response. Rush would continue his medical campaign. Stephen Girard would later take charge of the hospital at Bush Hill. But in the second week of September, before those structures were fully in place, the city’s response to the epidemic ran through the Free…