Yellow Fever Epidemics

Paper Summary:

The paper examines two studies of the 1790s yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. The paper examines its cultural significance in an article by Eve Kornfeld and matters of race, class and gender in an article by Jacquelyn C. Miller. The paper also looks at a study of the New York epidemic of 1822 by William Gribbin that shows how culture shaped views of this alarming disease.

Outline:
Introduction
Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF)
The Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793-1799
African American Workers and Race during the Philadelphia Epidemic, 1793
The 1822 New York City Epidemic
Concluding Discussion

From the Paper:

"Yellow Fever is familiar in several parts of the world. (Wills Plague 1996) Now known as Viral Hemorrhagic Fever, it is one of about 30 arthropod-transmitted diseases affecting humans carried by the Aedes Aesgypti mosquito, as was unknown during the Philadelphia and New York epidemics. VHF is similar to Dengue Fever as found in Asia, both diseases belonging to the Flavivirus or Group B Arbovirus family of Japanese and Tick-borne Encephalitis. (Peters:1152). As early as 1648, VHF reached the New World on slave ships from West Africa, the Aedes Aesgypti mosquito and virus adapting easily to coastal areas of what became the United States, the name of yellow fever adopted after a 1750 epidemic in Barbados. In 1802, most of Napoleon's troops died of the disease in Haiti. In the last U.S. epidemic in New Orleans in 1905, 8,399 people had yellow fever of which 908 died. (Humphreys: 102) Just before, two members of a military board of physicians agreed to be bitten by the Aegypti mosquito of which both acquired yellow fever and one died. A connection to the mosquito was suggested by the Cuban physician Carlos Findlay in 1881 but Americans took little notice."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Gribbin, W. "Divine Providence or Miasma? - The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1822." New York History. 53. (1972): 283-298.
• Humphreys, M. Yellow Fever and the South. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
• Kornfeld, E. "Crisis in the Capital - the Cultural Significance of Philadelphia's Great Yellow Fever Epidemic." Pennsylvania History. July. (1984):189-201.
• Miller, Jacquelyn C. "The Wages of Blackmen - African American Workers and the Meanings of Race during Philadelphia's 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic."
• Peters, C.J. "Infections caused by Arthropod and Rodent borne Viruses. Principles of Internal Medicine. 1. (2001): 1152-1165.

More papers on Yellow Fever Epidemics:

• Analytical Essay # 130498 : "American Yellow Fever Epidemics and their Implications"
• Term Paper # 129274 : "Yellow Fever Epidemic in Biloxi, 1853"
• Essay # 99192 : "Yellow Fever"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: