2024
Carolyn Eastman, PhD
Professor, Department of History, Virginia Commonwealth University
A Plague in New York City: How the City Confronted—and Survived—the Yellow Fever Epidemic in the Founding Era
I will spend a week with some of the oldest materials in the Medical Center Archives, relating to the establishment of the New York Hospital in 1771 and its management after the Revolution, including the hiring of a mixed-race staff of nurses and other employees. I study that period for a very specific reason: to understand how the city hospital responded to the ongoing and increasing threat of yellow fever during the 1790s and into the early 1800s, and the roles of Black and white care workers in facing the epidemics that hit the city several times. Ultimately, I seek to show that the hospital's and the city's response to these epidemics changed the nature of the city at this crucial moment in urban development.
