U.S. lawmakers are debating strategies to stem the economic impact of the coronavirus. With businesses across the country cutting back hours or closing, the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of wage workers.
Congress is responding with unprecedented legislation, which echoes New Deal programs of the 1930s. But the historical echoes extend much farther back, all the way to the first public health crisis in this country.
Fever Pains in the Early Republic
Prominent Philadelphia physician Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote about his approach to treating yellow fever patients during the epidemic. The National Library of Medicine
As a historian of infectious disease, I see familiar patterns emerging in this pandemic that date back to the early republic. In the 1790s, yellow fever became epidemic in the Caribbean islands and grew into a pandemic that reached the United States, Spain and Italy. It appeared in the U.S. capital, Philadelphia, in 1793, five years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
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