HIST 3D Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Typhoid Fever, Panama Canal, Gap Year
Viruses, Vectors and Globalization: Yellow Fever
● Yellow Fever: disease and epidemics
- Virus
- Vector
- Infection
- Clinical course
- Origins in Africa
- To the Americas
- Scourge of the Caribbean
- Eruptions into the U.S
● Debates about Cause and Prevention
- 19c: contagion and environment
- Epidemic 1878 and yellow fever commission
- Lab attempts 1880s and 1890s
- Carlos Finlay
- Mosquito idea
- Trials and rejection
● Walter Reed: Experiments and Public Health
- Life and army
- Scientist and epidemiologist
- Havana and yellow fever commission
- Hints and tragedies
- Old ideas rejected
- Mosquito transmits yellow fever
- Virus implications
- Gorgas cleans Havana
1880s, 1890s, and 1900 → solution to yellow fever discovered; countries knew how to prevent
yellow fever
● Yellow Fever
- Virus arose in west Africa as a parasite of various kinds of monkeys and apes
- Virtually all African species of primates can be infected with it, but they don’t die
of it; monkeys have adapted to the virus
- Specialized to be carried by a vector → vector came from species from the same
area and normally had a very restricted habitat in natural tree holes
- One of the vectors is a particular species
of a mosquito (Aedes Aegypti)
- Slaves taken across the Middle Passage to Spanish and Portuguese plantations
- Period where viruses multiplies within mosquito, but mosquito won’t transmit the
disease
- Recurring yellow fever epidemics (ex: Philadelphia 1793)
- One’s chances were fairly good, even if bitten
Document Summary
1880s, 1890s, and 1900 solution to yellow fever discovered; countries knew how to prevent yellow fever. Virus arose in west africa as a parasite of various kinds of monkeys and apes. Virtually all african species of primates can be infected with it, but they don"t die of it; monkeys have adapted to the virus. Specialized to be carried by a vector vector came from species from the same area and normally had a very restricted habitat in natural tree holes. One of the vectors is a particular species of a mosquito (aedes aegypti) Slaves taken across the middle passage to spanish and portuguese plantations. Period where viruses multiplies within mosquito, but mosquito won"t transmit the disease. Recurring yellow fever epidemics (ex: philadelphia 1793) One"s chances were fairly good, even if bitten. Only about 15% of bitten individuals go on to develop the hemorrhagic form. Transported via the slave trade; first by mosquitos (common on ships)
