How would America handle a major outbreak of an infectious disease? Our nation has weathered terrible epidemics in the past-not necessarily launched by terrorists. This volume documents one of the earliest, the "Great Plague" of 1793 where yellow fever raged through Philadelphia, killing one-tenth of the inhabitants. Doctors of the day had no idea of the source of the fever (mosquitoes) and tried all kinds of cures, most just as damaging as the illness itself.