I am in my early 30’s and I hadn’t heard about the Influenza Plague of 1918 until I read a Quilt
er’s Legacy, by Jennifer Chiaverini. I know, an epidemic that killed so many people world-wide, and I know more about Madonna or Marilyn Monroe than I do about an earth-wide tragedy that tore so many families apart. But I know something about it now, and so it was very interesting to discover yet another plague that I had no idea existed: the yellow jack fever plague of the 1878, it’s huge re-appearance in 1898 during the Spanish-American War in Cuba and the saga of tragedy that followed the various scientists who gave their lives to discover the carrier--mosquitoes.Reading about the history of yellow fever may sound absolutely boring, but I was riveted almost the whole time to the story in The American Plague, by Molly Caldwell Crosby. Her writing and the personal stories she told brought the history alive. What also made it fascinating, is the historical effect the disease had on governments, sewage systems and the Panama Canal. This was one disease that changed history.
I warn you, stop here if you're not interested in reading excerpts of the book. I went overboard as I kept finding the paragraphs that struck me. As it was, I had to stop part way through the book, it was getting so long. But I want to post this for myself, so I can remember the parts I enjoyed.
I liked reading Crosby’s description of the virus—“A virus is one of the smallest beings in evolution’s survival of the fittest, mutating and coalescing in order to thrive, its ultimate goal being epidemic” (8). It’s marvelous writing—and I was a Humanities not pre-Medical student. “As a virus, yellow fever is not one of the stronger ones. It cannot live outside of the body for more than a few hours. It does not spread through the air or by touch. It does not mutate as easily as some viruses…what makes yellow fever unique is its choice of vector. What the virus lacks in evolutionary prowess, the mosquito makes up for” (9).
“In the blood, yellow fever looks something like a fuzzy snowflake, but it is actually round with twenty smooth sides that protect the virus’s single strand of RNA at the center. The coating of the virus is made up of proteins, and human cells are attracted to those proteins—the virus doesn’t need to look for the healthy cells; they look for it…The healthy cell eventually enfolds the virus, taking it in and closing the door behind it…That is why a virus cannot be treated by antibiotics; human cells give it refuge, and anything that could destroy the virus might also destroy the cell” (10). I never understood viruses as well as I do now with her description.
“Yellow fever, more than any other disease, would seem conjured by God and divinely directed. When the slave trade first began, every European country that profited from the purchase and sale of Africans would soon see a yellow fever epidemic: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal. Though Asia had the ideal climate and the right mosquito, it has never had an epidemic of yellow fever. It also never participated in the African slave trade” (11). It’s connections like these that make the history come alive for me. “During its tenure in this country [United States], yellow fever would inflict 500,000 casualties and 100,000 deaths…The U.S. capital would move from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. after a devastating yellow fever epidemic in 1793. Alexander Hamilton suffered the fever, while George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson fled the city; the united States government was paralyzed…Napoleon would abandon his conquests in North American after losing 23,000 of his troops to yellow fever in the colony of Haiti. He made a hasty and fearful retreat from this pestilent hemisphere, selling his large Louisiana holdings for cheap to Thomas Jefferson” (12). Fascinating! The history made by a swath of suffering from a fever---our U.S. capital changing location, Napoleon selling the Louisiana Purchase to Thomas Jefferson—I actually can’t believe I never heard of it for over 3 decades of life. This fever shaped history.
Crosby goes on to explain that the mosquitoes from Africa, carrying the fever, would come on the slave ships, and the Emily B. Souder slave ship brought the fever to Memphis at the 1978 Mardi Gras, when 40,000 people revelers congregated, were bit by mosquitoes, and carried them to their homes all over. And until quarantine was declared in August, many ships floated the Mississippi carrying the mosquitoes and yellow jack.
In mid-August, an epidemic was finally acknowledged by the Memphis Board of Health. In five days 25,000 people fled Memphis. By the next month, 19,000 people remained and 17,000 were suffering yellow fever (47). Over 5,000 died (77).
The next year, with the weather looking like the previous year (they knew warm weather had something to do with the plague, but they didn’t realize that their sitting water + warm weather = lots of mosquito eggs hatching) Memphis decided to get a sewer system. Now this gets interesting—this sewer system was the first to use separate pipes for sewage and fresh water. Incredible that this is the first use. The engineer and inventor was named George Waring and “his idea was relatively simple, involving earthenware pipes sixteen inches beneath the ground, which would carry foul sewage only and exclude all rainwater. The straightforward plan to use separate pipes for sewage and fresh water would become known as the “Waring System”…The system proved so successful that cities all over the country soon adopted the design…The sewer system was created to clean up the foul, disease-ridden city, but it had another benefit that would not be appreciated for years to come. In eliminating cisterns and providing an efficient means for drainage, Memphis destroyed a large number of breeding places for the striped house mosquito” (88-89). Again, history is made as a consequence of this disease—a two pipe sewage system. Not glamorous, but I’m thankful for that development.
Yellow fever influenced history in the building of the Panama Canal. This path started in 1901, the mosquito having been (finally) established as the carrier of yellow fever, Major and Doctor William C. Gorgas fought to destroy all mosquito breeding grounds in Havana (flower vase, puddle of water, cisterns or barrels used for water storage). Gorgas had to send his men into every home in Havana for inspection and he made mosquito control a personal responsibility, sending out inspectors and fining citizens when mosquito larvae were found on their property and that practice is still used in Havana (204). Jim Writer wrote, “Yellow fever had been constantly present in Havana for 150 years and was nearly wiped out in less than 150 days” (204). It seems so invasive, to have my vases and puddles checked by an inspector, but I wouldn’t be able to argue with Gorgas’s results. And yellow jack fever is a horrible way to die. His results in Havana got him assigned as the medical officer to American’s Panama Canal project.
In 1881 the attempt to build the Panama canal had been disastrous—as many as 1/3 the men were lost to yellow fever and malaria (the project had been headed up by the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps who had built the Suez Canal). So in 1904 Gorgas was assigned to the project. He used his aggressive techniques to destroy the mosquito and its breeding grounds (amid lots of criticism) and the cases of yellow fever and malaria dropped off the charts and he was the officer on duty when the first ships sailed through the Panama Canal in 1914 (205). I vaguely remember from my History lessons that the Panama Canal had lots of obstacles to surmount, including sickness, but I would have thought it malaria alone. Now I know better and am amazed at the history made by yellow fever.
I hope you enjoyed the summary of the book. If you found this at all interesting, know that the book is packed with much more.
I love history, when it’s interesting. How about you?
I liked reading Crosby’s description of the virus—“A virus is one of the smallest beings in evolution’s survival of the fittest, mutating and coalescing in order to thrive, its ultimate goal being epidemic” (8). It’s marvelous writing—and I was a Humanities not pre-Medical student. “As a virus, yellow fever is not one of the stronger ones. It cannot live outside of the body for more than a few hours. It does not spread through the air or by touch. It does not mutate as easily as some viruses…what makes yellow fever unique is its choice of vector. What the virus lacks in evolutionary prowess, the mosquito makes up for” (9).
“In the blood, yellow fever looks something like a fuzzy snowflake, but it is actually round with twenty smooth sides that protect the virus’s single strand of RNA at the center. The coating of the virus is made up of proteins, and human cells are attracted to those proteins—the virus doesn’t need to look for the healthy cells; they look for it…The healthy cell eventually enfolds the virus, taking it in and closing the door behind it…That is why a virus cannot be treated by antibiotics; human cells give it refuge, and anything that could destroy the virus might also destroy the cell” (10). I never understood viruses as well as I do now with her description.
“Yellow fever, more than any other disease, would seem conjured by God and divinely directed. When the slave trade first began, every European country that profited from the purchase and sale of Africans would soon see a yellow fever epidemic: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal. Though Asia had the ideal climate and the right mosquito, it has never had an epidemic of yellow fever. It also never participated in the African slave trade” (11). It’s connections like these that make the history come alive for me. “During its tenure in this country [United States], yellow fever would inflict 500,000 casualties and 100,000 deaths…The U.S. capital would move from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. after a devastating yellow fever epidemic in 1793. Alexander Hamilton suffered the fever, while George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson fled the city; the united States government was paralyzed…Napoleon would abandon his conquests in North American after losing 23,000 of his troops to yellow fever in the colony of Haiti. He made a hasty and fearful retreat from this pestilent hemisphere, selling his large Louisiana holdings for cheap to Thomas Jefferson” (12). Fascinating! The history made by a swath of suffering from a fever---our U.S. capital changing location, Napoleon selling the Louisiana Purchase to Thomas Jefferson—I actually can’t believe I never heard of it for over 3 decades of life. This fever shaped history.
Crosby goes on to explain that the mosquitoes from Africa, carrying the fever, would come on the slave ships, and the Emily B. Souder slave ship brought the fever to Memphis at the 1978 Mardi Gras, when 40,000 people revelers congregated, were bit by mosquitoes, and carried them to their homes all over. And until quarantine was declared in August, many ships floated the Mississippi carrying the mosquitoes and yellow jack.
In mid-August, an epidemic was finally acknowledged by the Memphis Board of Health. In five days 25,000 people fled Memphis. By the next month, 19,000 people remained and 17,000 were suffering yellow fever (47). Over 5,000 died (77).
The next year, with the weather looking like the previous year (they knew warm weather had something to do with the plague, but they didn’t realize that their sitting water + warm weather = lots of mosquito eggs hatching) Memphis decided to get a sewer system. Now this gets interesting—this sewer system was the first to use separate pipes for sewage and fresh water. Incredible that this is the first use. The engineer and inventor was named George Waring and “his idea was relatively simple, involving earthenware pipes sixteen inches beneath the ground, which would carry foul sewage only and exclude all rainwater. The straightforward plan to use separate pipes for sewage and fresh water would become known as the “Waring System”…The system proved so successful that cities all over the country soon adopted the design…The sewer system was created to clean up the foul, disease-ridden city, but it had another benefit that would not be appreciated for years to come. In eliminating cisterns and providing an efficient means for drainage, Memphis destroyed a large number of breeding places for the striped house mosquito” (88-89). Again, history is made as a consequence of this disease—a two pipe sewage system. Not glamorous, but I’m thankful for that development.
Yellow fever influenced history in the building of the Panama Canal. This path started in 1901, the mosquito having been (finally) established as the carrier of yellow fever, Major and Doctor William C. Gorgas fought to destroy all mosquito breeding grounds in Havana (flower vase, puddle of water, cisterns or barrels used for water storage). Gorgas had to send his men into every home in Havana for inspection and he made mosquito control a personal responsibility, sending out inspectors and fining citizens when mosquito larvae were found on their property and that practice is still used in Havana (204). Jim Writer wrote, “Yellow fever had been constantly present in Havana for 150 years and was nearly wiped out in less than 150 days” (204). It seems so invasive, to have my vases and puddles checked by an inspector, but I wouldn’t be able to argue with Gorgas’s results. And yellow jack fever is a horrible way to die. His results in Havana got him assigned as the medical officer to American’s Panama Canal project.
In 1881 the attempt to build the Panama canal had been disastrous—as many as 1/3 the men were lost to yellow fever and malaria (the project had been headed up by the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps who had built the Suez Canal). So in 1904 Gorgas was assigned to the project. He used his aggressive techniques to destroy the mosquito and its breeding grounds (amid lots of criticism) and the cases of yellow fever and malaria dropped off the charts and he was the officer on duty when the first ships sailed through the Panama Canal in 1914 (205). I vaguely remember from my History lessons that the Panama Canal had lots of obstacles to surmount, including sickness, but I would have thought it malaria alone. Now I know better and am amazed at the history made by yellow fever.
I hope you enjoyed the summary of the book. If you found this at all interesting, know that the book is packed with much more.
I love history, when it’s interesting. How about you?
No comments:
Post a Comment