especially when there was improper ventilation. He argued that “immediate contact with the patient, his body, or bedclothes, or those of nurses or other attendants” had to be avoided for protection (Currie 9). According to Jan Golinski, Rush had a strong distaste for such quarantine measures, and thought they represented a “reversion to the Dark Ages” (154). They were as incompatible with Philadelphia’s medical and humanitarian progress as they were ineffective. He was unwavering in his anti-contagionist stance and insistent on environmental causes, eventually distancing himself from the medical societies that he once proudly associated with after they rejected his views. The debate between contagionists and anti-contagionists flourished, confusing the public with conflicting theories and advice. Conflicts were not limited to the battle between contagionist and anti-contagionist physicians. However, they do provide evidence of and contributed heavily to the terrifying uncertainty that descended on Philadelphia, contributing to heightened levels of antagonism. Unfortunately, Black people - especially the formerly enslaved and Haitian immigrants who volunteered to care for the sick and to bury the dead - bore the brunt. The volunteer corps was enlisted at the suggestion of Rush (a vocal abolitionist) after he observed that Black people seemed more likely to be immune to the fever based on his limited understanding of acquired immunity. He asked Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, leaders of the Free African Society, to recruit Black people to serve as nurses and cart volunteers. Realizing an opportunity to build goodwill towards their Abolitionist cause, they willingly obliged. However, as Black volunteers emerged as frontline workers, some white citizens propagated theories of ethno-racial immunity to Yellow Fever and sowed suspicion on their motives. Mathew Carey, an Irish-Catholic writer of the time, was a prominent exponent of such discourse. In his "A Short Account of the Malignant Fever," he noted that Africans and French Philadelphians were remarkably exempt from the effects of the disease and posited that they were intrinsically immune. He was, of course, mistaken, as immunity was gained through surviving the infection. In fact, many volunteers did fall victim to the fever, but were widely overlooked to uphold the fallacious theory. Carey questioned the motives of volunteers, and implied they undertook the work to extort money from lonely, ill white Americans. He claimed Black workers “were even detected in plundering the houses of the sick (77). Such claims were dangerous and heightened racial tensions that were already inflamed by the passage of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act.2 Appreciation 2 The Fugitive Slave Act allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves to their owners in Northern states. 58
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