Jean Devèze

Jean Devèze was a French physician and surgeon who arrived in Philadelphia from Cap-Français during the upheaval in Saint-Domingue. Appointed principal physician at Bush Hill hospital during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic, he rejected the most aggressive bleeding and purging regimens and favoured rest, cleanliness, fluids and close observation. He published an account of the epidemic in 1794.

Devèze directed Bush Hill’s medical care and produced an important contemporary account of the 1793 epidemic. The importance of Jean Devèze also lies in the wider intellectual setting of the work, where observation, experiment and the circulation of ideas shaped how later generations understood the contribution.

In Laurie Halse Anderson’s Fever 1793, Separated from family and forced to act for herself, Mattie eventually reaches the Bush Hill hospital reorganised by Stephen Girard and is treated by Jean Devèze.