welcome to between the cover summer series with our Spotlight on South Florida I'm Anne bocock and I'm here with author and historian Robert Watson his new book is America's first plague the deadly epidemic that crippled a nation we often say that covid was unprecedented but it wasn't the first plague to ravage this country thank you for coming and and take us back to Philadelphia and yellow fever yeah well and it's always a pleasure to be here and thank you for what you do I enjoy the show yeah so uh during covid I was stuck inside like the rest of the world uh looking for something to do and I thought why don't I write a book about the first pandemic I assumed it would be the Spanish Flu influenza early 1900s and I found that in 1793 there was a horrible pandemic in fact my title of the book America first plague comes from newspapers politicians to public they called it the plague and it struck Philadelphia which was the interim Capital City while what is Washington DC today while that was being built I estimate that it killed at least 10 percent of the population of the capital city and then a tour up and down the Eastern Seaboard the death toll may have been as high as 20 percent uh so it was a devastating disease as you correctly noted yellow fever what made it even worse yellow fever comes from a mosquito Adidas aegypti it means the unwelcome Egyptian in Latin but nobody then knew what caused it there was no vaccination no known cure so the Panic the chaos was was off the charts the way you wrote this it was a nightmare during during this time here it is Philadelphia you said was the interim uh capital for for the country was also the center of medicine at the the time and here we have people they don't understand viruses they don't understand bacteria but yet they managed to have a lot of theories yeah they sure did so Philadelphia was the most important city of course it's where the Declaration was written Constitutional Convention it had been an interim Capital it was uh the first circulating Public Library the home of Benjamin Franklin so Philadelphia was the main city without question and the centerpiece of medicine in the country sadly tragically I called the chapter on this the Physicians war and I got that directly from newspapers Physicians were arguing it was a flat out War over what caused it and how they should treat it and they got it dead wrong Benjamin Rush who was a signer of the Declaration he was America's most favorite and most esteemed physician our Hippocrates you might say Benjamin Rush got it dead wrong they believed in two things one was phlegms body fluids and phlegms were off balance therefore he believed we need to purge people his patients had constant diarrhea and vomiting he and he had them use mercury poisonous roots and when that didn't work he gave them even more in fact other Physicians and even Alexander Hamilton who opposed him said that he's a Scourge worse than the disease and he probably killed as many people as the disease the other uh theory was miasma or mass Mata which is foul air rod coffee a dead animal swamps they thought that foul air was a part and they got both wrong it turned out it was a mosquito so the the cause and the Cure were both completely wrong like you do in every book of yours that I've read you manage to find some Extraordinary People some heroes in this one doctors that put their life on the line they didn't know what they were dealing with they were experimenting where did you find them yeah but fortunately uh you know during covet I had a lot of time for research and I there was some people at the Library of Congress which was closed but came in and helped me by sending me documents and digging up things for me but um there were a number of doctors who stayed in Philadelphia and treated their patients even though they thought it was contagious it wasn't but they thought it was uh The Wharf the dock area in Philadelphia was called hell town and here's one truism in history no matter where you are the docs were hellish this is Pirates criminals Sailors it was just the worst place and these doctors bravely went down to this hell town at the Docks even if they thought it was contagious several doctors contracted it several doctors died there was a French doctor named Jean de Vise who's from what was present day Haiti back then Sant domingue and he had seen it before or variations of it and he was willing to treat the people dying he went into the worse conditions expose themselves to it so there were some absolute heroes in the medical field even though other doctors got it dead wrong there are so many comparisons to covet not only did you write the book during the pandemic but here we have in this time there's Panic there's fear there's mistrust of the government yeah I mean it is affecting marginalized communities does that like Amaze you when you were living this and then writing this in fact one thing I did and I talked to my editor about it was I didn't think people would believe me if I wrote it so I used quotes from politicians newspapers Physicians the mayor of Philadelphia Matthew Clarkson was very enlightened at George Washington as president was there so they asked people to wear masks and half the people did the other half said it's their freedom they refused to wear a mask they asked people to socially distance to walk on opposite sides of the street to stay indoors and they noticed that people were getting sick who were out at Sunset now that's when mosquitoes are active they didn't know it was from a mosquito so they asked people to refrain from that and people purposely gathered in groups saying it's our right to do this preachers called their flocks out at Sunset and said we're going to pray it away so um the same fights over covid we saw pour out one of the political parties was trying to enforce all this the other one was blaming them and saying it's our right to not do it uh and unfortunately another truism you find throughout history every culture every country every period in time they blamed immigrants it came from immigrants then they blame the black community then they blame the Jewish Community some preachers called a theater in town the synagogue of Satan saying it's the evil the theater and evil of Jews in the city so the same horrible bigotry that has plagued Humanity unfortunately plagued us in our interim capital city and the fear and panic as you correctly noted it was such that you know diseases Wars things of this always bring out the best in humanity but they always bring out the worst and this brought out both thank you quick lightning round either a sentence or or a word for these few questions the best or the worst advice you got before you started writing find your own style don't try to be Stephen J Gould Kurt Vonnegut David McCullough Doris Kearns Goodwin just write with your own style it'll flow more naturally and then somebody else said write it like it's a movie to make it so it visually the colors The Sounds the what people were doing that morning what that way it hops off the pages what was the trickiest part of writing this book some of the old English I found some Diaries from some Quakers a woman named Elizabeth Drinker and every other word is ye thy you know so it's it's a little cumbersome to read especially handwritten if there was a one-word teaser for what this book is about what is that word overcoming yeah we overcame it this nation endured uh when it this almost ended the nation what we endured if we could see your bookshelf at home what would that say about you I love history full of history books yeah and lastly one thing that you would tell your younger self learn other languages I have barely some degree of understanding of a few languages I would have tried to become fluent in several languages this book is fascinating and we only just touched the surface it is America's first plague the deadly epidemic that crippled a Young Nation as always Dr Robert Watson you have taught me something and I love the book Thank you thank you Ann appreciate it I'm Anne bocock please join me on the next between the covers [Music]