RT Journal
T1 PUblic health legislation
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2009
FD March 18
VO 301
IS 11
SP 1182
OP 1182
DO 10.1001/jama.2009.307
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.307
AB 
The earliest colonists in this country appear to have taken vigorous, although, as the event proved, pathetically futile, measures against the great pandemics of yellow fever, cholera and smallpox. These diseases swept over the feeble pioneer settlements with a devastating force that we of this sheltered generation can hardly realize. There were at least ten distinct epidemics of yellow fever in New York in the eighteenth century; there were over 4,000 deaths from yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793 in a population of less than 60,000; over 8,000 persons in Boston in a population of about 19,000 contracted smallpox in a single year, practically all the rest of the population having had the disease previously.