John Harvey Powell (1914-1971) graduated from Swarthmore College and earned his Ph.D. degree in American History at the University of Iowa. Kenneth R. Foster is Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Mary F. Jenkins is a Supervisory Park Ranger and Supervisor of the Dolley Todd Madison House and Visitor Center at Independence National Historical Park. Anna Coxe Toogood is Park Historian at Independence National Historical Park.

"A brilliant and model treatment of one of the most macabre incidents in American History."-New York Herald Tribune "A brilliant case study of the visitation of the scourge in Penn's city."-American Historical Review "A fascinating history of Philadelphia's great plague. Historian Powell's conscientious grubbing among the records pays off with a cumulative effect of horror and heroism seldom found in the most artful fiction."-Time "Unique in its weaving of the timeless aspects of human behavior with an authentic account of a major epidemic in American and medical history, this book is carefully researched and a very good read."-Nursing History Review

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction to the 1993 EditionPreface to the 1949 EditionAcknowledgments''A Merry, Sinful Summer''Infection in Water Street Fever, Domestic and Foreign Prevention, Personal and Civic Crisis Panic "This Excellent Physician" Bush Hill The Committee "Sangrado"The FugitivesHeight of the Plague OctoberFrostAfterwardsNotesIndex