Cousin Amy's report

Brother William and his daughter Sally were both very ill. Amy reported on their cases to her cousin Abigail Robinson in Newport, Rhode Island:

"Brother William took a large dose of active physick when he was first taken which had produced an abatement of his symptoms, was then put to bed and drank snake root tea till a profuse perspiration took place, but as there was no further care taken to carry off the putrid bile, and to prevent its accumulation, a lax and uneasiness in the bowels continued till the third or fourth day after he had taken the first mentioned medicine, to relieve this uneasiness the Physician who then attended him had given him one small dose of laudanum, which was in fact silencing the voice of nature that was calling for relief that way -- the effect of the first dose had gone off, and brother Wm. had sent into Sally's chamber for the second, when Dr. Jay who had just then arriv'd desir'd that he might not take it till he him, after which Dr.Hosack their first physician ceased visiting them.



"Jay gave him frequently gentle doses of physick, such as salts and manna -- Rhubarb -- or an ounce of Rochelle salts dissolved in a pint of chicken broth and drank half at a time, and very frequent injections. Dr. H was giving Sally Marsh-rosemary with the same design as the Laudanum to her father, and wine by the way of cordial -- to her Jay gave an emetic, which reliev'd her of a nausea and reaching, and a very troublesome cough which H supposed to have proceeded from disorder'd lungs, when her fever was very high he bathed her feet in warm water into which he put some medicine -- and bound something on her forehead that had a very reviving effect and roused her from a death like sleep, in which she would lay for many hours and from which it was almost impossible to awake her. She was very putrid and seem'd as near a mortification as a person could be and escape, and this treatment join'd to such as has been describ'd in her father's case were the means of recovery."

The family gave Amy great credit for her family's recovery. Amy also shared her general ideas on proper treatment.

"I believe that nothing will give effectual relief in that disorder but a continued discharge of bile, but care should be taken to support with light nourishing diet, and the doses of physick moderate. This was the method of the greatest Medical Man. But tho one may relate the outlines of his method, it is impossible to give and for any but a very few to attain his sagacity in tracing disorders to their cause, and in discovering the difference of situations apparently similar. But it is astonishing that blunderers don't stumble upon this manner, for everyone within our knowledge has been reported to be better after the first purge, and have generally been thought likely to recover, but yet they have not taken the hint to go on in the same way, but have suffered the bile to accumulate have even given astringents to retain it, till it destroyed the bowels and produced a mortification.

"There was a black man taken with the fever while Dr. Jay was at my brother Wm's -- to him he gave an ounce of salts at first, and salts in smaller quantities afterwards was all the medicine he took -- and tho I think he was more severely seized than either brother or Sally, he was well enough to go to town in five or six days."

Margaret Wistar Haines

Margaret Haines was a Quaker famed for her tireless work with the poor. However since the beginning of the epidemic the 64 year old woman confined herself to her house, entertained in the main by Rebecca Jones, a preeminent Quaker "preacher," who preached that one could not escape the rod. When Margaret had "a severe chill," followed by a "smart fever," she sent her daughter away, "for it's a serious thing to visit the sick at his awful time," and asked for an African American nurse.

The nurse her daughter hired seemed "little used to good nursing," but she proved to be "very attentive," and "pleased" the patient. Margaret's son came into the city, much to the distress of his wife. Margaret kept him from her room arguing that coming from the country air he was too vulnerable. She looked at him from a window. He stayed in the house, anxiously taking preventatives like Fothergill's pills which "opened" his body "cleverly." When he went to the door to talk to his mother he had "garlick or segar constantly" in his mouth. He worried that the letters he sent to his wife in the country might carry infection so he smoked them and wrote warnings on the envelop, e.g. "don't let the bearer come into the house," or "turn this horse into the pasture and then nobody go near him." He was discomforted by the warm temperature, in the low 80s that weekend, and found "they have more misketoos in the house than I remember and wonder how they can sleep at all."

Margaret was bled and blistered by Dr. Parke. She let Daniel Offley pass into the sickroom because he had visited many of the sick. Offley did more than comfort Margaret. When a prominent Quaker like Haines died, a notice describing her life and her demeanor at death was included in the Society's records. Offley waited through her deliriums and heard her repeat twice, "O Lord, thy will and not mine be done, be with me to the end if it be thy holy will, blessed be thy name, forever and ever." Her daughter, who did sneak into her room, got chills and then fever, and took to her own bed feeling as if she had been blessed. The nurse could provide what little else her dying mother needed, so she, the daughter, could die happily, for her "life had been spared while I was capable to render any assistance or relief to my dearest and valued parent."

She went to her room with "a black lad who was to stay that night with me." After "dreadful conflict and bodily suffering," Margaret died quietly at 5 a.m. Her daughter's fever abated. The distraught son did not get infected and was encouraged by friends to believe that he had done all a dutiful son could.