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<\/a><\/p>\nThe frequently recurring disease, typhus, struck the city throughout the 1840s, killing 205 people in 1848 alone. Dysentery terrorized the city every summer, especially the poorest neighborhoods, and would go on to kill more than 1,700 citizens between 1848 and 1851. Meanwhile, malarial fevers spread easily and frequently in the city’s low, flat lands between the rivers, and tuberculosis, often called consumption, was also a constant presence.<\/p>\n
Ten times as many people died of malaria and tuberculosis in Philadelphia than died of the much more feared cholera, but because the malaria and tuberculosis victims passed away gradually and quietly – they died “romantically,” as it was termed – the general public took to dreading cholera more, for it was known for killing its sufferers “with terrifying speed and ugliness.”<\/p>\n
It was not uncommon for several diseases to have devastating outbreaks at once. In 1852 – the same year that smallpox killed more than 400 Philadelphians – 443 died of scarlet fever, 558 more of dysentery, and more than 1,200 were claimed by tuberculosis.<\/p>\n
Culled from:\u00a0Dr.\u00a0M\u00fctter\u2019s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\nVintage Surgical Illustration Du Jour!<\/h3>\n