A Case of Infectious Fever political cartoon, 1820
Permanent ID:
11824Call number:
Bb 612 C266Language:
EnglishDate:
1820Image Description:
At the center of this 1820 cartoon, a man lying face-down on a bed vomits into a bucket, groaning "drunk drunk oh lord." He is surrounded by doctors and officials from the New York Board of Health who are convinced that he has yellow fever, and who ignore the African American servant woman, standing to the left of the bedside, who explains that the patient is merely drunk. To the left, New York Evening Post editor William Coleman interviews a doctor. Four men stand behind the patient's bed holding handkerchiefs to their noses. At far right, a doctor poking his head through the door recommends quarantine. This cartoon pokes fun at a 1820 case wherein a drunk man identified in newspapers as "William C. Coleman," who claimed to hail from Philadelphia, was incorrectly diagnosed by New York doctors as having yellow fever. The cartoonist implies that Philadelphians would know better. Various historians have identified some of the men in this cartoon as Marine Hospital physician Joseph Bayley, French doctor Felix Pascalis, and New York physicians David Hosack and Samuel Latham Mitchill.Format:
Etchings; Watercolors; Political cartoonsDimensions:
Width: 32.5 cm, Height: 26.5 cm (image)Publisher:
Collection:
Historical Society of Pennsylvania medium graphics collectionRelated People or Organizations:
Unknown Artist (artist)Unknown (colorist)
Moloshok, Rachel (Transcribed by)
Moloshok, Rachel (Encoded by)
Historical Society of Pennsylvania (repository)
Pascalis Ouviere, Felix, 1762-1833 (depicted)
Samuel Latham Mitchill, 1764-1831 (depicted)
Hosack, David, 1769-1835 (depicted)
Coleman, William, 1766-1829 (depicted)
Bayley, Joseph, approximately 1775-1836 (depicted)
Williams, John C. (depicted)
New York Evening Post (mentioned)