‘We Yet Survive’: Physician Patient Relationships and the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1853 (2019)
During the summer of 1853 a devastating yellow fever epidemic swept through the Lower Mississippi River Valley. This article examines that epidemic as it was experienced in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and reveals the disjoint between patients’ expectations and physicians’ capabilities. In the months following the first case, Vicksburg physicians leveraged their role in managing the epidemic to participate in national conversations regarding communicability, treatments and sanitation. However, from their patients’ viewpoint, these conversations were useless. Instead, growing sexton reports and overcrowded cemeteries proved physicians’ inability to manage the crisis, thus reinforcing Americans’ wariness of professionalised medicine. In the end, physicians and residents held opposing experiences of the epidemic, and physicians’ inability to meet the practical needs of their patients further challenged their claims to professional legitimacy.
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