"Bring Out Your Dead," "The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793"

All the books I list on this web site are great books, books that I truly enjoy. Some of them I've read several times and still find something in each reading I did not notice before. Though I'm never really sure what I notice in a second or third reading. I have to read it again and again until I like wring the last drop of humanity out of it.
That is the case with this book, "Bring Out Your Dead," by J.H. Powell originally published in 1949.
If you like great adventure stories, this is a great adventure every bit as much as any Indiana Jones or Rambo book or movie you can imagine. The difference is this is a real story and a story that no one single mind could possibly create.
The book is about a yellow fever plague that raged throughout Philadelphia in the late summer of 1793, but if you want to make the story fit modern times just substitute some other disease for which no cause is unknown like cancer or AIDS everytime you see the words "yellow fever." It is the same kind of story.
Just as in modern times as doctors attempt to discover cures for these terrible diseases, the doctors of 1793 tried a variety of steps to cure yellow fever. But, try as they did, they could do little for the terrible agony that their patients endured before they died. Oh, they'd try one "cure," and one patient would recover. They'd try the same "cure" on another patient, and the patient would die.
The steps they tried sound truly amazing or incredible as you read about them today, so much so that as you read about them you are inclined to wonder: "My goodness, why would they ever try something that stupid ? Were they nuts?"
But in the midst of an epidemic in which hundreds of people were dying every day, those doctors tended to try anything and everything hoping that something would work.
Then, incidentally, people believed invisible vapors or germs some called "formites" carried the disease. So, they thought if a place was scrubbed with lye and other harsh cleansers, the "formites" would die and the place would be safe from yellow fever. Yet, nothing they did work, including dragging a cannon up and down the streets and firing it off ever few blocks. Some thought the noise and smell of gun smoke from the cannon going off would kill whatever it was that carried the disease.
Something else about the book is you will be reading about the work of what at that time were some of the leading medical minds in the United States. One in particular was Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and, oh, what Mr. Powell says about him! Here is an example from his preface:
"Dr. Rush's radiant charm is seductive. I sometimes I forget, in the spell of his presence, that he had no common sense. But sense that is common is also dull. And dull, Dr. Rush never was." No, Mr. Powell did not live in Dr. Rush's time or know him. He is able to write as he does about the famous doctor because he read many of his papers related to how he attempted to treat his patients, often with deadly results. Many of his patients died because as hard as he tried to cure them, what he did hurried many of their deaths. For example, he believed in excessive bleeding, that is actually opening veines to let blood flow out in profusion. He added to that the use of heavy doses of not telling what that was intended to clean their digestive systems n the extreme.
The story also gets into two of the true and surprising heroes of the epidemic, both former slaves who are represented as if they were the equals of other citizens. That is especially curious given the year and the time, even in a place like Philadelphia. You will like both of them as well as so many other characters, manyof low social standing in normal times who attain the status of giants for their courage in a deadly battle.
I will stop. Just suffice it to say: get the book, and read it. I found my copy on Amazon.com for under $5 delivered, I think it was.