Note Type
Historical NoteNote
From: The Yellow Fever Epidemic of Savannah In 1820, with A Sketch of Dr. William Coffee
Daniell
Author(s): Joseph Ioor Waring
Source: The Georgia Historical Quarterly , December, 1968, Vol. 52, No. 4 (December,
1968), pp. 398-404
Published by: Georgia Historical Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40578899
Among the most active fighters against the fever of 1820 was William Coffee Daniell, M.D. Descendant of Virginia families, he was born near Greensboro, Georgia, January 13, 1792, where his father was a planter. After receiving his primary education under Dr. Moses Waddel of Wellington, South Carolina he entered the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1814. In Philadelphia he was associated with Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, whom he greatly admired.
Without financial resources, he commenced in Savannah, and became one of the most distinguished Georgia physicians of his day. In 18 19 he went succ through an attack of yellow fever. By this time he had well known enough to achieve political prominence as a of the city, and held this office until 1824, when became Mayor. Later, in 1825, he became a member of the State Senate.
In 1820 and later he was health officer of the town, as a very active practitioner and was largely instrumental in promoting the "dry culture" of rice as a health measure. Following the death of his wife in 1834, he gave up practice and the management of his several plantations, on one of which in Liberty County he died December 27, 1868.
Dr. Daniell's activities were numerous and fruitful. One of his more important efforts was concerned with discouragement of the treatment of "yellow and other autumnal fevers" by the then current drastic regimen of purgatives and mercurials. Among other activities was his invention of a splint for the thigh, and operation of a private hospital, which later became the City Hospital.
For a number of years he was a collaborator for the Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences and contributed articles on the treatment of yellow fever and on constipation. His major medical work was his Observations Upon the Autumnal
Fevers of Savannah, a book of 1 5 2 pages.Note Type
DescriptionNote
From Miner Catalog: Surrounded on three sides by marshes and rice fields, Savannah was a natural focus early in the century for malarial disorders. Increased trade with the West Indies brought another mosquito-borne disease: yellow fever. Intermittent outbreaks had occurred from 1801 to 1819, until the devastating epidemic of 1820. The population of Savannah was reduced by migration from 7500 to 1500, and more than 700 of its citizens died. Daniell and most of his contemporaries attributed the disease to miasms rising from the poorly drained lowlands surrounding the city,
Daniell introduces in this work the idea of applying synapisms (mustard plasters) for the treatment of yellow and other autumnal fevers. Writing a quarter of a century later, Elisha Bartlett remarked, "What leeches were to Broussais; what the lancet is to Bouillaud; and what quinine is to many of our southwestern physicians, sinapisms are to Dr. Daniell." (#37, p. 577)
An 1814 graduate of the medical department of the University of Philadelphia, William Coffee Daniell was one of Georgia's leading practitioners until his retirement from medicine in 1834, Miner copy inscribed by author to the American Philosophical Society, 2 February 1827.