Sandy Anderson’s diary
In 1795, New York was hit by a violent outbreak of yellow fever.
Sandy Anderson was a young doctor, newly married and at the beginning of his career. The epidemic took everything from him: his parents, his brothers, his wife, most of his friends and his patients. His diary is studded with these lucid and precise chronicles. But after all this suffering, he was able to turn over a new leaf, left his profession and New York to become an artisan, remarried, had six children and died at the age of 95.
“Alexander Anderson’s diary does not offer the big picture of the epidemic that statistical accounts provide. But witnessing a single person’s experiences gives depth of meaning to those demographic numbers, a lesson that we have learned in our own age from news stories that capture the burnout of a frontline health worker, or the trauma experienced by bereaved families. Anderson’s diary reveals much the same slow-motion horror story that threatens today’s families and care workers. Embedded in those diary entries, and in those coffins sketched in the margins in ink that has turned brown after more than 200 years, is a reminder that he sought to help, suffered and survived. It has helped remind me that we will, too.”