IT’S AMAZING HOW NOTHING CHANGES
As hard as it is for any to believe this news article by Charles Brockden Brown was published in 1803 instead of yesterday, we assure the reader that the above mentioned will be the least of their shocks. Trying his best to write as objective as he can, Charles brilliantly hints at how the Yellow Fever Plandemic is a socially engineered money printing machine for those who cause the panic, knowing before hand that 60,000 people in one city will cease all employment for months at a time, place their stock accordingly. He mentions how they’ve milked it five times in the last 10 years in his city alone. He does a brilliant job at capturing the in great detail the devastating affects of politicizing such a thing. It’s mostly those in government who trade stock, & only one in local government can cause a panic; thus in a very real way, it’s an issue with a political cause, putting the people into two political parties at war with each other. Charles is better at this than I. Without farther ado..
THE ARTICLE (Literary Magazine & American Register for 1803):
YELLOW FEVER
“How powerfully is the imagination affected by the frequent and almost periodic returns of this new, strange and unwelcome visitant. ‘Till the year 1793, we, in this part of America at least, the present generation, had only heard and read of pestilence. Since that period it has visited us five years out of ten, and, in our great cities, there is no domestic event more familiar to us; none which we anticipate with more probability, and by which we prepare more naturally to Regulate our Motions, than this.
I often imagine to myself my feelings on being informed, by some one able to give the information, at the opening, for instance, of the year 1793, that for the ensuing ten years, a destructive plague would rage among us, during five summers, by which the city would be, for two or three months, almost entirely depopulated; by which all the usual functions and employments of life would be Suspended, and a large portion of Sixty thousand people, which subsist by daily and uninterrupted employment, would be suddenly bereft of all activity.
My notions of the evil would doubtless have been imperfect and inadequate, as, indeed, these notions, with all the benefits of experience, still are. I should have underrated it in some respects, while in other respects, I should equally have overrated it. I should have had but feeble conceptions of the misery which individuals were about to suffer, while I should probably have computed its influence on population and general prosperity at much too high a rate. I could not have imagined before-hand the effect of familiarity, the Power which Custom has to enable us to accommodate our-selves to inevitable evils, and that vigour which one springs of population is sure to derive from the depression of another.
There is one thing, at least, which my ignorance of human nature would have hindered me from predicting; and that is, the effect which the introduction of this new disease has had on the habits and opinions of physicians. Who would have dreamed that this order of men would split into hostile factions, which should wage war against each other with the utmost animosity; that they would arrange themselves in parties, the champions of opposite opinions, not only as to the mode of curing the malady, but as to the source to which the malady itself is to be traced.
What volumes of acrimonious controversy have the last ten years produced on these subjects? How dogmatic the assertions, how violent the invectives, which the importation-men and the home-origin men have darted at each other. How is the pride of human reason humbled, by observing that in this enlightened age, with so vigilant a police, with such comprehensive and exact methods of investigating facts, and such diffusing vehicles of information and comparison as Newspapers afford, there should still be in the community opposite opinions as to the nature and origin of a pestilence which has visited our principal cities five times in ten years? That even its contagious nature should not be unanimously settled?
If I go into company, indeed, and talk with a physician on this subject, I shall be told that the means of information, on this head, have been so abundant and satisfactory that the question has long ago been settled by all rational people. Everything, he will go on to tell me, demonstrates the origin of the yellow fever to be foreign, and its appearance among us to be in consequence of importation. I cannot help being biassed by the positive assertions of a man of general candour, of knowledge and experience; but what am I to think when I meet another man, a physician, of equal understanding and experience with the former, whose assertions are just as positive, and directly opposite? But still greater is my perplexity when I meet a third, who tells me that this question has engaged his attention for many years, but that the more he collects, investigates and compares, the farther is he from an absolute decision, the more inscrutable the question becomes; and time, he is now fully of opinion, instead of clearing up the darkness, will only involve the matter in greater obscurity.
Such reasoners as the last, are, indeed, rarely to be met with. Doubt is so painful a state, and a man’s pride and prejudice are so unavoidably engaged, on one side or the other, as he advances in his inquiry, and we so easily and suddenly pass from a state of neutrality in which we only inquire after truth, into a state of conviction, when we merely search for arguments and facts in favour of one side; that nothing is rarer than a physician who hesitates on this subject. Some men may vary from year to year, and change sides as often as the fever visits us, but they are ardent and dogmatic in maintaining what happens to be their present opinion, and stigmatize all their opponents as fools and villains.
This medical controversy is much to be regretted on many accounts. It is not one of the least evils that it tends to shake the confidence of mankind in the skill of those, whose skill is indebted for the greater part of its success to the confidence with which the patient is inspired by it.” -(CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN, 1803)
ORIGINAL 1803 ARTICLE:
FIND ENTIRE NEWS PAPER BY CLICKING THIS LINK HERE
HE WROTE A BOOK ABOUT IT!
Oh, and Charles Brockden Brown also happened to write an entire book about it, which can be found for view & download below. Compliments of BaumBookSanto. Just read the first 5 pages & you’ll see that Charley Brown was certainly an “anti-vaxer”. See if you can find the word “Jew” in his story. I’ll give you a hint, you can. Charles says himself, that his books are facts put into a story form. He writes about reality in the form of a story. He reports on news in the form of a story. Anyways, this books will be on our site for purchase here soon, for any who want a hard copy.
ARTHUR MERVYN OR MEMOIRS OF THE YEAR 1793 BY CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN
CAN GET BOOK HERE
Leave comment