Colonial Public Health Events
1707  A brick pest house is constructed on Sullivan’s Island for isolation of individuals suffering from contagious diseases.
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•1711 Yellow fever and smallpox epidemics in Charleston. Gideon Johnson wrote on November 11, 1711: “Never was there a more sickly or fatall season than this for the small Pox, Pestilential ffeavers, Pleurisies and fflux’s have destroyed numbers here of all sorts, both Whites Blacks and Indians.” From Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America,1953, p. 75.
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Pest houses were constructed to isolate individuals who were suffering from contagious diseases. The periodic epidemics of smallpox and yellow fever came on top of endemic diseases. Malaria was endemic, and referred to as quartile fever or “seasoning” that virtually all newcomers experienced. Colds and respiratory infections often resulted in pleurisy or pneumonia. Dysentery and other intestinal diseases were called fluxes.  These endemic diseases killed far more people than the more terrifying epidemics.