How did the poorest experience epidemics in the past? During the 1790s, New York City was hit by yellow fever nearly every summer, and twice saw the numbers of cases rise to epidemic levels. While the wealthy had the resources to flee the city for the countryside, believed to offer a healthier climate, the city’s poor and African American residents remained behind, seeking work in an empty, ominously quiet place. Whereas many scholars have studied Philadelphia’s deadly epidemic of 1793, and others have examined the writings of medical experts who sought to understand how the disease spread, narratives of the “sick poor,” most of whom were women, have gone almost completely ignored. This talk uncovers a world of experiences by those often lost to history.