Yellow Jack
More than 41,000 people died from the scourge of
yellow fever in New Orleans between the years 1817 (the first year that
reliable statistics are available; surely there were deaths in earlier
times) and 1905 (the Crescent City's last epidemic). The number of
fatalities ranged from none in years that the plague spared New Orleans
to more than a thousand in nine of the eighty-eight years of the
fever's activity.
Yellow
fever is a viral disease transmitted between humans by an
Aedes aegypti
mosquito. People get yellow fever from the bite of an infected female
mosquito. The mosquito injects the yellow fever virus into the
bite. Many yellow fever infections are mild, but the disease can cause
severe, life-threatening illness. Symptoms of severe infection are
high fever, chills, headache, muscle aches, vomiting, and backache.
After a brief recovery period, the infection can lead to shock,
bleeding, and kidney and liver failure. Liver failure causes jaundice
(yellowing of the skin and the whites of the eyes), which gives
yellow fever its name.
Yellow fever is still active in Africa and South America. A vaccine is available.
Yellow fever contributed to New Orleans rise as a biomedical center. Construction of the Panama Canal directly benefited from advances in hygiene and medical understanding developed in New Orleans.