Stubbins Ffirth
American physician
Stubbins Ffirth (1782 – 1820) was an American trainee medical doctor notable for his unusual investigations into the cause of yellow fever. He theorized that the disease was not contagious, believing that the drop in cases during winter showed that it was more likely a result of the heat and stresses of the summer months. While correct in noting that yellow fever was significantly more prevalent in summer, Ffirth's explanation proved to be incorrect. It was a full six decades after his death that a breakthrough would be made, with Cuban scientist Carlos Finlay discovering the link to mosquitoes carrying the disease.
Works
The 1793 yellow fever epidemic, the largest outbreak of the disease in American history, killed as many as 5,000 people in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – roughly 10% of the population. Ffirth joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1801 to study medicine, and in his third year he began researching the disease that had so significantly impacted the area. At the time, the causes of yellow fever were unknown, and Ffirth set out to prove that it was not contagious. He was so sure of his theory that he began to perform experiments on himself.
Ffirth chose to bring himself into direct contact with bodily fluids from people that had become infected with yellow fever. He started by making incisions on his arms and smearing infected vomit into the cuts; he then proceeded to pour it onto his eyeballs.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2358042. VIAF identifies the subject as 68618989. The Library of Congress control number is no2003054013. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1782, 1820, 1793 and 1801.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stubbins Ffirth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.