What are some historical facts mentioned in Fever 1793?

This novel takes place
during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia, an actual historical event. The
epidemic literally decimated the population of the city, killing 10% of its people. At that
time, as the book mentions, Philadelphia was the capital of the country, not Washington, D.C.
The doctor mentioned in the novel, Benjamin Rush, was an actual physician who sought to cure the
disease through bleeding. Dr. Kerr uses this method in the book to try to cure Mattie's mother
of the disease, as Dr. Rush influenced the treatment used by other doctors. Dr. Rush also
contracted the disease but survived. 

In the novel, Dr. Rush summons Reverend
Allen of the Free African Society to help victims of the disease. This also really happened, as
Dr. Rush thought people of African descent couldn't contract the disease, and the African
American community thought nursing the sick and burying the dead would help African American
people prove their equality to whites. There was a community of freed African American people in
Philadelphia at the time, and the character Eliza, who works at the coffeehouse that Mattie's
family runs, is part of this community.