History of yellow fever

The outbreak of yellow fever in Barcelona in 1821

The evolutionary origins of yellow fever most likely came from Africa.[1][2] Phylogenetic analyses indicate that the virus originated from East or Central Africa, with transmission between primates and humans, and spread from there to West Africa.[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.[4] However, some researchers have argued that yellow fever might have existed in the Americas during the pre-Columbian period as mosquitoes of the genus Haemagogus, which is indigenous to the Americas, have been known to carry the disease.[5]

The first outbreaks of disease that were probably yellow fever occurred in the Windward Islands of the Caribbean, on Barbados in 1647 and Guadeloupe in 1648.[6] Barbados had undergone an ecological transformation with the introduction of sugar cultivation by the Dutch. Plentiful forests present in the 1640s were completely gone by the 1660s. By the early 18th century, the same transformation related to sugar cultivation had occurred on the larger islands of Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Cuba. Spanish colonists recorded an outbreak in 1648 on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico that may have been yellow fever. The illness was called xekik (black vomit) by the Maya.

At least 25 major outbreaks followed in North America, such as in 1793 in Philadelphia, where several thousand people died, more than nine percent of the total population. The American government, including President George Washington, had to flee the city, which was the capital of the United States at the time. In 1878, about 20,000 people died in an epidemic which struck the towns of the Mississippi River Valley and its tributaries. The last major outbreak in the US occurred in 1905 in New Orleans. Major outbreaks also occurred in Europe in the 19th century in Atlantic ports following the arrival of sailing vessels from the Caribbean, most often from Havana.[7] Outbreaks occurred in Barcelona, Spain, in 1803, 1821, and 1870. In the 1870 outbreak, 1,235 fatalities were recorded of an estimated 12,000 cases.[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.[9][10]

The first mention of the disease by the name "yellow fever" occurred in 1744.[11] Many famous people, mostly during the 18th through the 20th centuries, contracted and then recovered from, or died of, yellow fever.

  1. ^ Gould EA, de Lamballerie X, Zanotto PM, Holmes EC (2003). Origins, evolution, and vector/host coadaptations within the genus Flavivirus. Advances in Virus Research. Vol. 59. pp. 277–314. doi:10.1016/S0065-3527(03)59008-X. ISBN 978-0-12-039859-1. PMID 14696332.
  2. ^ McNeill, J. R. (2010). Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914 (1st edn, p. 390). Cambridge University Press. Via Amazon.
  3. ^ Bryant, J. E.; E. C. Holmes; A. D. T. Barrett (2007). "Out of Africa: A Molecular Perspective on the Introduction of Yellow Fever Virus into the Americas". PLOS Pathog. 3 (5): e75. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.0030075. PMC 1868956. PMID 17511518.
  4. ^ Haddow (2012). "X.—The Natural History of Yellow Fever in Africa". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Section B. 70 (3): 191–227. doi:10.1017/S0080455X00001338.
  5. ^ Wilkninson, Robert (1995). "Yellow Fever: Ecology, Epidemiology, and Role in the Collapse of the Classic Lowland Maya Civilization", Medical Anthropology.
  6. ^ McNeill, J. R. (1 April 2004). "Yellow Jack and Geopolitics: Environment, Epidemics, and the Struggles for Empire in the American Tropics, 1650–1825". OAH Magazine of History. 18 (3): 9–13. doi:10.1093/maghis/18.3.9.
  7. ^ Barrett AD, Higgs, S (2007). "Yellow fever: a disease that has yet to be conquered". Annu. Rev. Entomol. 52: 209–29. doi:10.1146/annurev.ento.52.110405.091454. PMID 16913829. S2CID 9896455.
  8. ^ Canela Soler, J; Pallarés Fusté, MR; Abós Herràndiz, R; Nebot Adell, C; Lawrence, RS (2008). "A mortality study of the last outbreak of yellow fever in Barcelona City (Spain) in 1870". Gaceta Sanitaria / S.E.S.P.A.S. 23 (4): 295–9. doi:10.1016/j.gaceta.2008.09.008. PMID 19268397.
  9. ^ Coleman, W (1983). "Epidemiological method in the 1860s: yellow fever at Saint-Nazaire". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 58 (2): 145–63. PMID 6375767.
  10. ^ Meers, P. D. (August 1986). "Yellow fever in Swansea, 1865". The Journal of Hygiene. 97 (1): 185–91. doi:10.1017/s0022172400064469. PMC 2082871. PMID 2874172.
  11. ^ The earliest mention of "yellow fever" appears in a manuscript of 1744 by Dr. John Mitchell of Virginia; copies of the manuscript were sent to Mr. Cadwallader Colden, a physician in New York, and to Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia; the manuscript was eventually printed (in large part) in 1805 and reprinted in 1814. See: Dr. Mitchell misdiagnosed the disease that he observed and treated, and that the disease was probably Weil's disease or hepatitis. See: Jarcho S (1957). "John Mitchell, Benjamin Rush, and yellow fever". Bull Hist Med. 31 (2): 132–6. PMID 13426674.