Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - June - 2003 Issue
A Plague Among Us
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Most histories focus on heroes and inspiration. George Washington crossing the Delaware is an indelible image of the Revolution that has been burned into all of our memories. (http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/gw/el_gw.htm). Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze painted this scene in 1851, and he may or may not have known that many, if not most, of the people on this little ship of fate were pockmarked. The stark fact is that almost every person on the Continent contracted the illness. A careful examination of George on the one dollar bill does not show the pox that is mentioned in Pox Americana, probably because we choose to ignore “inconvenient facts.” J. P. Morgan, on the other hand, was a banker and therefore axiomatically disliked by many and so can hardly escape mention of his rhinophyma. We choose what to remember and what to forget and we choose to forget about the devastation of plagues while remembering the disfiguring conditions of others.
Denying disease its role simply leaves an empty stage for crucial causative events. Interlopers then step in to place the emphasis on events and actions of their choosing. I for one would prefer to know the truth. As Ms. Fenn makes clear, Smallpox was a constant factor for both the English and the Colonists during the Revolution. The English were generally immune from centuries of exposure in Europe, while native-born Colonists were susceptible.
But this illness was not an equal opportunity infector. Native Americans suffered much higher mortality because their immune systems had not seen this infection at all before. For them it was often fatal. I can clearly recall discussions of “divine right” in school. Even in the 1960’s this seemed absurd but very little light was shown upon the impact of disease. Rather the emphasis was placed on the advanced civilization of the white man with not so subtle suggestions that perhaps the best man had won. That seems to me to be an instance of simply be arranging the facts in an order that suits the speaker and the listeners.
Ms. Fenn reminds us that luck, including bad luck, plays an important part in our history. Decimated populations, as the Romans learned after experiencing bouts of plague, lose not only wars but also their empires, as our Native Americans learned again one thousand four hundred years later.
In the Americana Exchange Databasethere are currently 158 source records for Small Pox, 37 for Smallpox, 287 for Yellow Fever, 267 for “disease,” 65 for “bilious,” and 15 for Pneumonia. One of these matches, A Review of the Diseases of Dutchess County, From 1809 to 1825... by Hunting Sherrill was particularly interesting to me because it fits into my collection of material about the Hudson Valley. I found a great copy, in original boards, on ABE for $200 and I’m reading it now.
Pox Americana, The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 was first printed in 2001 by Hill and Wang and offered in paperback in 2002. It’s available through your local bookstore, online used on ABE and both new and used on Amazon and other internet retailers. It is 370 pages and very well done.
