Stubbins Ffirth and yellow fever
A medical student drank patients' vomit to prove a point
A University of Pennsylvania student was sure yellow fever was not contagious. He rubbed patients' vomit into cuts, dripped it in his eyes and drank it, and never fell ill. He was wrong anyway: mosquitoes carry the disease, as was proved nearly a century later.
Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Did you know
In 1804 a medical student drank yellow fever patients' vomit to prove the disease was not contagious. Stubbins Ffirth never got sick, but he was wrong: mosquitoes spread it, as was finally shown in Cuba in 1900. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1789 Storming of the Bastille — 15 years earlier
- 1796 Jenner's first vaccination — 8 years earlier
- 1804 Coronation of Napoleon — same year
- 1804–1813 First Serbian Uprising — same year
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — 10 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea (1783) — 21 years earlier
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — 8 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 24 years later
Africa
- 1798 Battle of the Pyramids — 6 years earlier
- 1804–1903 Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the Sokoto Caliphate — same year
- 1805–1848 Muhammad Ali becomes ruler of Egypt — 1 year later
Asia
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — 11 years later
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic — 13 years later
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — 15 years later
Oceania
- 1788 First Fleet arrives in Australia — 16 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (aged 55)
- Napoleon Bonaparte (aged 35)
- Ludwig van Beethoven (aged 34)
- Simón Bolívar (aged 21)
- Alexander Pushkin (aged 5)
- Immanuel Kant (aged 80)
- James Watt (aged 68)
- George III (aged 66)
- Thomas Jefferson (aged 61)
- Mikhail Kutuzov (aged 59)