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Black Yellow Fever Immunities, Innate and Acquired, as Revealed in the American South*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Kenneth F. Kiple  and
Virginia H. Kiple
Kenneth F. Kiple
Affiliation:
Bowling Green State University
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Extract

West Africa’s disease environment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was decidedly hazardous to the health of Europeans who ventured there. Comtemporary observers reported die-offs of white troops reaching the 80 percent mark annually, while the loss of one half of a ship’s company on the coast was not all that unusual. Philip Curtin has calculated that on the average England’s loss of white troops ranged between 300-700 per 1,000 mean strength per annum with his most recent word on the subject placing the overall white death toll at about half of the white soldiers, government officials, and civilian personnel who reached West African shores. K. G. Davies, on the other hand, would have the “risks of the African station” even higher with an individual facing “three chances in five of being dead within a year.”

West African natives by contrast positively thrived amidst European death. Again referring to Curtin’s data, the biggest killer of whites by far was “fever.” The fevers of Sierra Leone, for example, dispatched white troops at the rate of 410.2 per thousand per annum during the years 1819-1836, yet caused the death of only 2.5 African troops per thousand per annum. A similar differential experience with fevers occurred throughout West Africa—an experience which Professor Curtin has suggested constituted a crucial reason for the Atlantic slave traded Europeans would have preferred to locate plantations in tropical Africa close to a seemingly inexhaustible source of cheap labor, but they were persuaded by the lethal nature of West African fevers to locate those plantations instead in the more salubrious New World. Put plainly, they found the expense of transporting African workers across the Atlantic eminently preferable to challenging the odds against their own survival in Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , Summer 1977 , pp. 419 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1977 

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Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank the Bowling Green Faculty Research Committee for their generous support and the Interlibrary Loan Services of the Bowling Green State University Library for locating many rare volumes which we, the authors,

References

Notes

1 Daniell, William F., Sketches of the Medical Topography and Native Diseases of the Gulf of Guinea Western Africa (London, 1849), 11–12Google Scholar, 60, 72, and passim. Pym, William, Observations upon Bulam, Vomito Negro, or Yellow Fever (London, 1848), 270Google Scholar.

2 Curtin, Philip D., “‘The White Man’s Grave’: Image and Reality, 1780-1850,” Journal of British Studies, 1 (1961), 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade; a Census (Madison, 1969), 286Google Scholar.

4 Davies, Kenneth G., “The Living and the Dead: White Mortality in West Africa, 1684-1732,” in Engerman, Stanley L. and Genovese, Eugene D., eds., Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton, 1975), 98Google Scholar. Curtin (Atlantic Slave Trade, 286) was generalizing for the entirety of the slave trade period. Davies, as the title of his essay suggests, was concerned with a half century only. The only real point here is that two important students of Europeans in West Africa agree that white mortality was incredibly high.

5 Curtin, Philip D., “Epidemiology and the Slave Trade,” Political Science Quarterly, 83 (1968), 210–11CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

6 Ibid., 192 ff.

7 The origin of both diseases has been the subject of sporadic debate since the beginning of this century. See for example Carter, Henry R., Yellow Fever: An Epidemiological and Historical Study of its Place of Origin, ed., Carter, Laura A. and Frost, Wade H. (Baltimore, 1931)Google Scholar. Taylor, Richard M., “Epidemiology,” in Strode, George K. et.al., eds., Yellow Fever (New York, 1951), 529–33Google Scholar, summarizes the yellow fever argument and concludes that the disease was of African origin. For malaria, see the views of Boyd, Mark F., “An Historical Sketch of the Prevalence of Malaria in North America,” American Journal of Tropical Medicine, 21 (1941), 223–44Google Scholar; Bruce-Chwatt, L. J., “Paleogenesis and Paleo-Epidemiology of Primate Malaria,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 32 (1965), 363–87Google ScholarPubMed; and Jarcho, Saul, “Some Observations on Disease in Prehistoric North America,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 38 (1964), 1–19Google ScholarPubMed, regarding its pre-Columbian presence in the New World.

8 They join “promptly” after their permanent introduction. Many believe that vectors as well as microparasites were imported, in which case a process of “acclimitization” for both probably took place during which the diseases died out and required reimportation. It would seem, however, that by the middle of the seventeenth century both yellow fever and falciparum malaria had arrived to stay.

9 Two recent works which reveal the enormous impact of imported disease on the Americas are those by Crosby, Alfred W., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn., 1972)Google Scholar, whose concern is exclusively European pathogens, and McNeill, William H., Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, N.Y., 1976)Google Scholar, who assesses the damage inflicted by plagues of both European and African origin.

10 Curtin, , “Epidemiology and the Slave Trade,” 207Google Scholar; Wood, Peter H., Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974), 88–91Google Scholar.

11 Guerra, Francisco, “The Influence of Disease on Race, Logistics and Colonization in the Antilles,” Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 69 (1966), 35Google Scholar.

12 Wood, Black Majority, 91.

13 Curtin, Philip D., The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action,1780-1850 (Madison, 1964), 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For a summary of these breakthroughs, see Livingstone, Frank B., “Malaria and Human Polymorphisms,” Annual Review of Genetics, 5 (1971), 33–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 For an extensive review of these abnormalities consult the excellent chapter on “Hematology” by Bullock, William H. and Jilly, Pongrac N. in Williams, Richard A., ed., Textbook of Black-Related Diseases (New York, 1975), 199–316Google Scholar.

16 Young, Martin D., et. al., “Experimental Testing of the Immunity of Negroes to Plasmodium Vivax,” Journal of Parasitology, 41 (1955), 315–18CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. For a possible explanation, consult Miller, Louis H., et. al., “The Resistance Factor to Plasmodium Vivax in Blacks: the Duffy-Blood-Group Genotype, Fy Fy,” New England Journal of Medicine, 295 (1976), 302–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 For an attack on the “myth” that blacks thrived but whites did not in hot climates see Stampp, Kenneth M., The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York, 1956), 6-7, 295–97Google Scholar.

18 Hunter, George W., Frye, William W., and Swartzwelder, J. Clyde, A Manual of Tropical Medicine, 4th ed., (Philadelphia, 1966), 31Google Scholar; Taylor, , “Epidemiology,” 447–48, 454, 530–31Google Scholar; Smithburn, Kenneth C., “Immunology,” in Strode, , ed., Yellow Fever, 183Google Scholar; Burnet, Frank M. and White, David O., Natural History of Infectious Disease, 4 ed. (Cambridge, 1972), 245Google Scholar.

19 See for example Curtin, , “Epidemiology and the Slave Trade,” 196-97, and Wood, Black Majority, 90–91Google Scholar.

20 Today “endemic” yellow fever is defined as the transmission of the yellow fever virus from “non-human primate to mosquito to man,” and “epidemic” yellow fever is intended to mean transmission from man to mosquito to man. “Enzootic” yellow fever, on the other hand, connotes a pattern of transmission from non-human primate to mosquito to non-human primate. Thus as Mosley, James W. (“Yellow Fever” in Hoeprich, Paul D., ed., Infectious Diseases: A Guide to the Understanding and Management of Infectious Processes [Hagerstown, Md., 1972], 665)Google Scholar has pointed out, “Endemic yellow fever is a misnomer, because the term actually refers to the incidental infection of man in an enzootic area.” However, whether the term should be regarded as a “misnomer” in a historical context is another question. West Indian regions, for example, have been pronounced “endemic” where man was regularly infected by the yellow fever virus, even though enzootic conditions were frequently not possible, and the disease was actually only an irregular visitor.

21 Felsenfeld, Oscar, The Epidemiology of Tropical Diseases (Springfield, III., 1966), 379Google Scholar; Taylor, Ian and Knowelden, John, Principles of Epidemiology, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1964), 162–64Google Scholar.

22 Curtin, Image of Africa, 75-76, was clearly concerned with this possibility yet he felt that “in West Africa it appears that infection of the African population, and hence its immunity, was maintained at most times,” 76.

23 Ashburn, P. M., The Ranks of Death: A Medical History of the Conquest of America (New York, 1947), 135–36Google Scholar, details some of these epidemic appearances; August Hirsch, Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology, 3 vols., Trans. from the 2d German edition by Creighton, Charles, M.D. (London, 1883-1886), 1:318–31Google Scholar, lists every known epidemic in the Caribbean from the mid-seventeenth century onward.

24 For assurances that the “immunity” did seem to be almost absolute, see Guerra, “The Influence of Disease on Race, Logistics and Colonization in the Antilles,” passim; Humboldt, Alexander von, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, trans. Black, John, 4 vols. (London, 1811), 4:173Google Scholar; Parsons, Robert P., History of Haitian Medicine (New York, 1930), 1Google Scholar; Pinckard, George, Notes on the West Indies, Including Observations Relative to the Creoles and Slaves … with Remarks upon the Seasoning, or Yellow Fever of Hot Climates, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (London, 1816), 2:467Google Scholar; Belot, Charles, The Yellow Fever at Havana: Its Nature and its Treatment (Savannah, 1878), 39Google Scholar; and Lempriere, William, Practical Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica as they Occurred Between the Years 1792 and 1797, 2 vols. (London, 1799), 1Google Scholar: Tables following 98, 111.

25 For a brief introduction to the clinical features of yellow fever along with its pathology and pathogenesis, consult Rhodes, A. J., and Van Rooyen, C. E., eds., Textbook of Virology, 5th ed. (Baltimore, 1968), 702–704Google Scholar. For non-technical glimpses of the disease see Duffy, John, Sword of Pestilence; The New Orleans Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1853 (Baton Rouge, 1966), 10–11Google Scholar; Carrigan, Jo Ann, “The Saffron Scourge: A History of Yellow Fever in Louisiana, 1796-1905” (Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. of History, Louisiana State University, 1961), 3, 6–7Google Scholar; or Jones, Gordon W., “Virginians and ‘Calenture’,” Virginia Medical Monthly, 88 (1961), 391Google ScholarPubMed.

26 Carrigan, “The Saffron Scourge,” 6-7.

27 Taylor, “Epidemiology,” 451, points out that “retrospective serologic surveys” done in Brazil during the 1930s revealed immunity ratios in the under-fifteen age group of as high as 90 percent.

28 The äedes mosquito does not bite at a temperature below 62 degrees Fahrenheit, also prolonged cold forces it into hibernation. For “The Anthropod Vectors of Yellow Fever,” see the excellent chapter by Loring Whitman in Strode, ed., Yellow Fever, 229-98.

29 This of course is one reason why the disease did not flourish with any real virulence in North America throughout most of the colonial period. It had to await the growth of American cities. For “urban” yellow fever see the remarks of Taylor, “Epidemiology,” 451, and for yellow fever epidemics during the colonial period see Duffy, John, Epidemics in Colonial America (Baton Rouge, 1953), 138–63Google Scholar.

30 See for example, Owens, Leslie H. who in This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York, 1976), 29–30Google Scholar, portrays yellow fever as a ubiquitous disease in the antebellum South.

31 John L. E. W. Shecut, “An Essay on the Prevailing, or Yellow Fever, of 1817,” 17; Hume, William, “The Yellow Fever of Charleston, Considered in its Relations to the West India Commerce,” Charleston Medical Journal and Review, 15 (1860), 1–2Google Scholar; Belot, The Yellow Fever at Havana, 29; Diddle, Albert W., “Medical Events in the History of Key West,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 15 (1944), 450Google Scholar. Louisa Breeden to Mrs. Louisa Millard, Port Gibson, Sept. 18, 1824, in Miles Taylor and Family Papers (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana); Motta, Jacob de la, An Oratation, on the Causes of the Mortality Among Strangers, During the Late Summer and Fall (Savannah, 1820)Google Scholar, passim. Although representing or writing in different regions of the South, all of the above speak of “stranger’s fevers.”

32 Editors, , “Acclimation; and the Liability of Negroes to the Endemic Fevers of the South,” New Orleans Medical News and Hospital Gazette, 5 (1858-59), 80Google Scholar.

33 A tragic example of the price of acclimatization can be seen in the experience of Governor Claiborne sent by President Jefferson to rule a portion of the Louisiana acquisition. Claiborne himself took the disease and recovered. His first wife, second wife, and a young daughter did not. Carrigan, “The Saffron Scourge,” 43, 48.

34 Russel, Henry P., comp., An Official Register of the Deaths Which Occurred Among the White Population in the City of Savannah, During the Extraordinary Session of Sickness and Mortality Which Prevailed in the Summer and Fall Months of the Year 1820 to Which is Annexed… the Aggregate Amount of Deaths Among the People of Color (Savannah, 1820)Google Scholar.

35 Dawson, J. L., “Statistics Relative to the Epidemic Yellow Fever in the City of Charleston,” Charleston Medical Journal and Review, 10 (1855), 199–200Google Scholar.

36 “The Yellow Fever of Charleston,” Southern Medical Reports, 1 (1849), 410.

37 Thus many yellow fever deaths went unreported. For New Orleans’ long history of “covering up” yellow fever epidemics, consult McKowen, John C., Murder as a Money Making Art; A Social Study (Baton Rouge, 1901)Google Scholar, passim. For the epidemic of 1853 specifically, see Carrigan, Jo Ann, “Yellow Fever in New Orleans, 1853: Abstractions and Realities,” Journal of Southern History, 25 (1959), 342–46Google Scholar. See also Fenner, Erasmus D., History of the Epidemic Yellow Fever, at New Orleans, La., in 1853 (New York, 1854), 44Google Scholar, who speaks of the failure of physicians to issue cause of death certificates. For similar occurrences in Memphis and Biloxi, see Bruesch, S. R., “The Disasters and Epidemics of a River Town: Memphis Tennessee, 1819-1879,” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 40 (1950), 299–300Google Scholar, and Joseph Holt, Outbreak of Yellow Fever, at Biloxi, Harrison County Miss., Report to the Board of Health, State of La., Sept. 8, 1886, passim respectively. For a recent look at the problem consult Goldfield, David R., “The Business of Health Planning: Disease Prevention in the Old South,” Journal of Southern History, 42 (1976), 564–67Google ScholarPubMed.

38 Hume, “The Yellow Fever of Charleston,” 1-2.

39 Names of the Dead, Being a Record of the Mortality in Savannah During the Epidemic of 1854. (Savannah, 1854), 5.

40 Simons, Thomas Y., A Report on the History and Causes of the Strangers Fever of Charleston (Charleston, 1839)Google Scholar. For still other examples consult Lewis, P. H., “Sketch of the Yellow Fever of Mobile, with a Brief Analysis of the Epidemic of 1843,” New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, 1 (1845), 417Google Scholar, and Waring, William R., Report to the City Council of Savannah, on the Epidemic Disease of 1820 (Savannah, 1821), 40, 59Google Scholar.

41 A listing ot the yellow fever years for Savannah is provided by Usinger, Robert L., “Yellow Fever from the Viewpoint of Savannah,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 28 (1944), 144–45Google Scholar; for Charleston, see the Report of the Committee of the City Council of Charleston, upon the Epidemic Yellow Fever, of 1856 (Charleston, 1859), 5, 47-65, 67, Simons, A Report on the Strangers Fever of Charleston, 7-8, and A Series of Articles upon the Means of Preventing the Recurrence of Yellow Fever in Charleston Addressed to the Citizens of Charleston (Charleston, 1858), 6. For New Orleans, consult the appropriate tables in Hoffman, Frederick L., Vital Statistics of New Orleans, 1787-1909 (New York, 1913)Google Scholar. Many of these outbreaks seem to have been of relatively mild nature, and while it is true that there are “marked differences in the pathogenic properties of different strains of yellow fever virus” (Smithburn, “Immunology,” 183), some of the so-called epidemics were undoubtedly outbreaks of dengue which is transmitted by the same vector as yellow fever and therefore has a similar epidemiological behavior and produces many of the same symptoms except the widespread mortality. For examples of dengue’s frequent confusion with yellow fever, see Arnold’s, Richard D. discussion of The Identity of Dengue; or Break Bone Fever, and of Yellow Fever (Savannah, 1859)Google Scholar; Letter from W. B. Anderson to S. A. Cartwright, Vicksberg, Aug. 30, 1853, (Dept. of Archives, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana), and Diddle, “Medical Events in the History of Key West,” 460. See also Siler, Joseph F., Hall, Milton W. and Hitchins, A. P., Dengue: its History, Epidemiology … (Manila, 1926), 6–8Google Scholar.

42 U.S. medical literature from the eighteenth century onward is replete with tracts on yellow fever that never fail to speak of black immunity. Examples range from Lining’s, John eighteenth-century letter (“A Description of the American Yellow Fever, in a Letter from Dr. John Lining, Physician at Charleston in South Carolina, to Dr. Robert Whytt, Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh,” in Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary, Read Before a Society in Edinburgh [Edinburgh 1756], 2:404–32)Google Scholar pronouncing Charleston’s Negroes immune to Ramsay’s, David The Charleston Medical Register, for the Year 1802 (Charleston, 1803), 21Google Scholar, which attributed the phenomenon to a better ability of blacks to bear the climate to Tidyman’s, P. “A Sketch of the most Remarkable Diseases of the Negroes of the Southern States, with an Account of the Method of Treating them, Accompanied by Physiological Observations,” Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, 12 (1826), 325Google Scholar, which insisted that “nature has … rendered them almost proof against… this terrible disease.”

43 Computed from the appropriate decennial censuses.

44 Simons, A Report on the Strangers Fever of Charleston, 7-8.

45 Dowler, Bennet, “Yellow Fever of Charleston in 1858,” New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, 16 (1859), 596Google Scholar; A Series of Articles upon .. . Yellow Fever in Charleston.

46 Report of the Committee of the Physico-Medical Society of New Orleans on the Epidemic of 1820 (New Orleans, 1821), appendix.

47 Hoffman, Vital Statistics of New Orleans, Table 19.

48 Ibid. Moreover, it is probable that the number of white deaths has been understated. Fenner, History of the Epidemic Yellow Fever at New Orleans, 71, and Dowler, Bennet, Tableau of the Yellow Fever of 1853, with Topographical, Chronological and Historical Sketches of the Epidemics of New Orleans Since Their Origins in 1796 (New Orleans, 1854), 30Google Scholar, both physicians on the spot, put the total deaths in excess of 8,000.

49 An Official Register of the Deaths … in the City of Savannah.

50 Names of the Dead … 1854, 12.

51 The following calculations are based on the populations shown for the cities in question in the 1850 census.

52 Waring, Report to the City Council of Savannah, 3-4, points out for example that prior to Savannah’s 1820 epidemic the city contained about 5000 whites; however, by the end of the epidemic that population was reduced to 1500 with deaths accounting for only 666 of that reduction. Again in 1854 only one-third or so of the population remained throughout the epidemic. Names of the Dead… 1854, 4-5. Carrigan, “Yellow Fever in New Orleans,” 344, writes of joking in New Orleans newspapers about a “Can’t Get Away Club.” For the white stampede out of Memphis in 1878, see Baker, Thomas H., “Yellowjack: The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tennessee,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 42 (1968), 244–45Google ScholarPubMed. Bruesch, “The Disasters and Epidemics of a River Town,” 303, points out that even after slavery blacks constituted most of the “can’t get aways.”

53 Cartwright, Samuel A., “Prevention of Yellow Fever,” New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, 10 (1853), 316Google Scholar.

54 “Quickened” because of the westward movement which encouraged the growth of cities as well as the development of farms and plantations (thus providing the dense populations so necessary for the vectors’ survival) and because of the stimuli to the movement—technological advances in transportation, specifically railroads and steamboats, which provided mobility for the virus.

55 Fenner, Erasmus D., “The Epidemic of 1847: a Brief Account of the Yellow Fever that Prevailed at New Orleans, Vicksburg, Rodney, Natchez, Houston, and Covington, Louisiana,” New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, 5 (1848-49), 207Google Scholar.

56 Ibid.

57 Fenner, History of the Epidemic Yellow Fever at New Orleans, 55-56.

58 Dowler, Tableau of the Yellow Fever of 1853, 38-39.

59 Everett, Donald E., “The New Orleans Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1853,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 33 (1950), 384Google Scholar.

60 Report of the Howard Association of Norfolk Va., Summer of 1855 (Philadelphia, 1857), 49. The epidemic cost Norfolk about 2000 deaths out of a population of 8000 to 10,000 which saw it through. Ibid, 38.

61 Report of the Portsmouth Relief Association to the Contributors of the Fund for the Relief of Portsmouth, Virginia During the Prevalence of the Yellow Fever in that Town in 1855 (Richmond, 1856), 142.

62 For examples of this growing conviction, consult Merrill, A. P., “Distinctive Peculiarities and Diseases of the Negro Race,” DeBow’s Review, 20 (1856), 621–22Google Scholar; Fenner, “The Epidemic of 1847,” 207; and Lewis, “Sketch of the Yellow Fever of Mobile,” 416. Statistical evidence to buttress the notion was generated during the Norfolk epidemic where “very few indeed of the pure blacks died” yet “the mulattoes suffered almost as much as the whites.” Report of the Howard Association of Norfolk, Va., 38.

63 Nott, Josiah C., “An Examination into the Health and Longevity of the Southern Sea Ports of the United States, with Reference to the Subject of Life Insurance,” Southern Journal of Medicine andPharmacy, 2 (1847), 19Google Scholar.

64 Nott, Josiah C. and Gliddon, George R., eds., Indigenous Races of the Earth; or New Chapters of Ethnological Inquiry (Philadelphia, 1857), 367Google Scholar.

65 Merrill, “Distinctive Peculiarities and Diseases of the Negro Race,” 621; Roche, René La, Yellow Fever… Including a Sketch of the Disease as it has Occurred in Philadelphia from 1699 to 1854, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1855), 2: 60–69Google Scholar.

66 U.S. Army Surgeon-General’s Office, Report on Epidemic Cholera and Yellow Fever in the Army of the United States, During the Year 1867 (Washington, 1868), xxvi, 80Google Scholar. See Charles Decéry, Mémoire sur L’Epidemie de Fievre Jaune qui a Régné à la Nouvelle-Orléans et dans les Campagnes Pendant L’année 1867 (Nouvelle Orleans, 1868) for a history of the 1867 outbreak.

67 For the dramatic postbellum increase of blacks in New Orleans who came directly from the plantations see Blassingame, John W., Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973), 1Google Scholar.

68 Michel, R. F., Epidemic of Yellow Fever in Montgomery, Ala., During the Summer of 1873 (Montgomery, 1874), 5Google Scholar.

69 Savannah Morning News, Nov. 28, 1876; Le Hardy, Julius C.. “Yellow Fever: It’s Relations to Climate and to Hygenic Measures in the United States,” Virginia Medical Monthly (1894), 9–10Google Scholar; Julius C. Le Hardy, Yellow Fever, the Epidemic of 1876 in Savannah (Atlanta, n.d.), passim.

70 Simons, Manning, “A Note on the Epidemic of Yellow Fever at Port Royal in 1877,” Extracts from Transactions, South Carolina Medical Association (Charleston, 1878), 31–32Google Scholar.

71 Baker, “Yellowjack,” 261.

72 Ibid., 252, 261. Bruesch, “The Disasters and Epidemics of a River Town,” 304, has calculated an even lower black mortality rate of 7 percent. See also the Memphis and Shelby County Health Department, Yellow Fever and the Board of Health: Memphis 1878 (Memphis, 1964), 27.

73 Baker, “Yellowjack,” 261. Bruesch, “The Disasters and Epidemics of a River Town,” 304, has calculated a white mortality rate of 75 percent.

74 New Orleans Howard Association, Report of the Howard Association … in the Epidemic of 1878 (New Orleans, 1878), 18Google Scholar.

75 Power, J. L., The Epidemic of 1878 in Mississippi (Jackson, 1879), 162Google Scholar.

76 Ibid., 168-70.

77 Ibid., 162-63.

78 The last outbreak of the disease in the United States occurred in 1905, although the final imported case was registered as late as 1923. Mosley, “Yellow Fever,” 665.

79 Chassaignac, Charles, “Some Lessons Taught by the Epidemic of 1905,” in Augustin, George, ed., History of Yellow Fever (New Orleans, 1909)Google Scholar.

80 Monette, John W., “An Inaugural Thesis on the Endemial Bilious Fever, as it Generally Occurs in the Vicinity of Natchez,” Transylvania University 15 (1825), 5–6Google Scholar; La Roche, Yellow Fever, 2: 60-69.

81 This is the case unless it turns out not that blacks were unusually resistant to the disease but that Caucasians were extraordinarily susceptible. Epidemiologists during the early part of this century were really the only ones to comment at length on the nature of black yellow fever refractoriness. Carter, Yellow Fever, eds. Carter and Frost, 270, put the long run environmental case succinctly enough when he said, “The African Negro contracts yellow fever, so far as we know, as readily as other races, but has it more mildly and rarely dies of it. His reaction to yellow fever is just what one would expect to have been evolved in a race for many generations subject to that infection.” However others such as Boyce, Rubert, “Note Upon Yellow Fever in the Black Race and its Bearing Upon the Question of the Endemi-city of Yellow Fever in West Africa,” Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, 5 (1911), 103Google Scholar, have referred to a peculiar refractoriness of the Chinese to the disease which may suggest the intriguing possibility of a heightened Caucasian susceptibility.