TY  - JOUR
T1  - PUblic health legislation
Y1  - 2009/03/18
N1  - 10.1001/jama.2009.307
JO  - JAMA
SP  - 1182
EP  - 1182
VL  - 301
IS  - 11
N2  - 
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.

SN  - 0098-7484
M3  - doi: 10.1001/jama.2009.307
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.307
ER  -