For my student selected novel, I decided to read “Fever 1793” by Laurie Halse Anderson. This book was about the Yellow Fever epidemic that spreads just after the US won their independence during the American Revolution. With this time period comes many interesting and exciting events, themes, and technologies. One of the things that really stood out to me that is unique to this time period is their notification system. Throughout this book there are details about how where ever you were there were church bells ringing. As mentioned before, this book is about the Yellow Fever epidemic. This is why the church bells ring. Every time a citizen of that city, died from Yellow Fever they would ring the church bell for every year that they lived.
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When they had mistaken her grandfather for a fever victim the owner of the carriage dropped them off and forced them to walk ten miles back to the city of Philadelphia. To me this was exasperating! I could not believe that these rude people could do that to a sick old man and his granddaughter. One tool that in particular I found extremely useful for this time period was the mangle. This was used to ring out wet linens and garments. This machine would hold a piece of cloth, them two metal bars would push it into it’s self to ring out all of the excess water from the washing process. This was mentioned many times in the book and I thought that it would be an important element to add to my essay. One last element that I would like to go into depth on is the hospital that Mattie was transported to when she got Yellow Fever. The way it was described, it seemed extremely advanced from what you think you would find in the 1790’s. There were doctors that could tell exactly what Mattie was going through without any prior study of the disease. This is rather rare for the time period of the
When they had mistaken her grandfather for a fever victim the owner of the carriage dropped them off and forced them to walk ten miles back to the city of Philadelphia. To me this was exasperating! I could not believe that these rude people could do that to a sick old man and his granddaughter. One tool that in particular I found extremely useful for this time period was the mangle. This was used to ring out wet linens and garments. This machine would hold a piece of cloth, them two metal bars would push it into it’s self to ring out all of the excess water from the washing process. This was mentioned many times in the book and I thought that it would be an important element to add to my essay. One last element that I would like to go into depth on is the hospital that Mattie was transported to when she got Yellow Fever. The way it was described, it seemed extremely advanced from what you think you would find in the 1790’s. There were doctors that could tell exactly what Mattie was going through without any prior study of the disease. This is rather rare for the time period of the