History of yellow fever
[3] The virus as well as the vector Aedes aegypti, a mosquito species, were probably brought to the western hemisphere and the Americas by slave trade ships from Africa after the first European exploration in 1492.
[8] Smaller outbreaks occurred in Saint-Nazaire in France, Swansea in Wales, and in other European port cities, following the arrival of vessels carrying the mosquito vector.
[12] At the time, the known solution to recovery was found to be long and tedious as it was expected that patients needed to consume bitters and country air away from the metropolitan area in order to recover.
[13] As doctors and people of interest investigated the cause of yellow fever, two main hypotheses derived from the confusing data they collected.
Some historians believe Napoleon intended to use the island as a staging point for an invasion of the United States through Louisiana (then newly regained by the French from the Spanish.).
[citation needed] Nearly 700 people in Savannah, Georgia, died from yellow fever in 1820, including two local physicians who lost their lives caring for the stricken.
Among the more prominent victims were: Spanish colonial Governor Manuel Gayoso de Lemos (1799); the first and second wives (d. 1804 and 1809) and young daughter (1804) of territorial Governor William C. C. Claiborne; one of New Orleans' most important early city planners Barthelemy Lafon (1820), architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe and one of his sons (1820, 1817, respectively), who were in New Orleans building the city's first waterworks; Jesse Burton Harrison (1841), a young lawyer and author;[23] Confederate Brig.
The steamship, Benjamin Franklin sailing from Saint Thomas in the West Indies and carrying persons infected with the virus arrived in Hampton Roads in southeastern Virginia on 6 June 1855.
[25][26] During the outbreak, the Norfolk Naval Hospital patient register, recorded a total of 587 fever cases (see thumbnail) admitted between the date of 25 July and 10 November 1855.
[28]Bermuda suffered four yellow fever epidemics in the 1800s, both mosquito-borne and via visiting ships, which in total claimed the lives of 13,356 people, including military and civilian population.
During the 1864 epidemic, a Dr. Luke Pryor Blackburn, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, visited the island several times, to assist the local medical community on account of his knowledge of the disease.
[citation needed] Blackburn was arrested and tried, but acquitted owing to lack of evidence, other than hearsay by witnesses, meaning that the culprit trunks could not be located.
[citation needed] The French effort to build a Panama Canal was damaged by the prevalence of endemic tropical diseases in the Isthmus.
The numerous deaths eventually led to the failure of the French company licensed to build the canal, resulting in a massive financial crisis in France.
