Stubbins Ffirth Bathed in Vomit to Prove Yellow Fever Wasn’t Contagious

Doctor Stubbins Ffirth, an American doctor began to investigate the causes and communicability of yellow fever in 1793. A yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia in July 1793 and peaked during the first weeks of October. It is estimated that 5,000 of a population of 45,000 who lived in Philadelphia at the time died. 

Many theories about the cause abounded.  Benjamin Rush, thought that the outbreak had originated in a pile of rotting coffee beans left on the docks. He developed a very aggressive approach to treatment, copiously bleeding his patients and administering large quantities of mercury. This therapy did not work to curb the disease.  Other doctors believed it was caused by miasma or ‘bad air’ but no one could determine which air was good and which deadly.  Attempts to liberate miasmas actually encouraged people to open their homes and ventilate them allowing the mosquitos that carried the disease to come in.

Stubbins Ffirth came to the conclusion that the fever was transmitted in body fluids and excrements, particularly vomit. In 1804, he undertook a series of experiments, summarizing his findings in a brief manuscript. His first trials involved feeding or injecting animals with black vomit, harvested from the bedsides of dying yellow fever patients – but they failed to prove Ffirth’s theory.  Ffirth tried infecting dogs through vomit.  One dog died ten minutes after having an ounce of vomit injected into its jugular vein, while others remained healthy. After five inconclusive experiments Ffirth stopped working with animals and began to experiment on himself. 

He then poured fresh vomit from yellow fever patients into open sores, wiped it into his own eyes, and even bathed in it to prove it did not transfer the disease. His theory was only slightly correct, despite his questionable and stomach-churning tests. “On October 4th 1802, I made an incision in my left arm, midway between the elbow and wrist, so as to draw a few drops of blood. Into the incision I introduced some fresh black vomit… a slight degree of inflammation ensued, which entirely subsided in three days, and the wound healed up very readily.” 

Undaunted, Ffirth continued filling himself with the vomit of dying yellow fever patients, injecting it into veins, under his cuticles and into his eye. For his tenth experiment, he fried up three ounces of vomit in a pan and inhaled the steam. Next, he constructed his own ‘vomit sauna’, sitting at length in a small closet with six ounces of steaming vomit. Ffirth eventually cut to the chase and decided to take his black vomit directly: “After repeating the two last experiments several times, and with precisely the same results, I took half an ounce of the black vomit immediately after it was ejected from a patient, and diluting it with an ounce and a half of water, swallowed it. The taste was very slightly acid… It neither produced nausea or pain… My pulse, which was beating 76 in a minute, moderately strong and full, was not altered either in force or frequency… No more effect was produced than if I had taken water alone.”  Ffirth remained in perfect health but was not one to give up. He decided to repeat these experiments “a great number of times”, eventually drinking several doses of vomit, “half an ounce to two ounces without dilution”. Even this had no effect, leaving Ffirth to concede that yellow fever was not carried in human vomit.

The real source of the transmission of yellow fever – a virus that is spread by the bite of an infected mosquitos.

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