How has yellow fever impacted people around the world, in the past as well as the present? Describe three examples, citing evidence from the text. Be sure to include a variety of examples in your evidence. “Epic Epidemics,” by Marcia Amidon Lusted
When French refugees from the Caribbean arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1793, they brought with them a disease. Showing symptoms of fever, chills, and black vomit, citizens of the city began to fall sick at alarming rates. As “yellow fever” spread and 75 to 100 people died per day, President George Washington, his Cabinet members, and thousands more left the nation’s capital to avoid infection.1 They did not return until November, when the deadly epidemic showed signs of easing.
The epidemic may have ended, but doctors in Philadelphia had no idea what had caused it. Some believed that yellow fever was contagious and spread person-to-person through close contact. More than 100 years passed before its real cause was revealed—that yellow fever is carried by a parasite that lives in mosquitoes and is transmitted to humans when they are bitten by an infected mosquito.
The men who figured this out in 1900 were Dr. Walter Reed and Dr. Carlos Finlay while they were in Cuba during the Spanish–American War (1898). Yellow fever and dysentery were killing more soldiers than bullets during the conflict. Once it was determined that mosquitoes were spreading the disease, steps were taken to destroy mosquito breeding grounds.
Today, a vaccination is available for yellow fever. In places such as Africa and Latin America, however, supplies of vaccines are not available, which puts about 900 million people at risk of contracting the disease.
Philadelphia was the temporary capital of the United States while Washington, DC, was being built