The evolutionary origins of yellow fever

Yellow fever

Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....

 most likely lie in Africa.
It is assumed that the virus originated from East or Central Africa and spread from there to West Africa. The virus as well as the vector Ae. aegypti, a mosquito species, were probably brought to South America by ship after 1492

Voyages of Christopher Columbus

In the early modern period, the voyages of Columbus initiated European exploration and colonization of the American continents, and are thus of great significance in world history. Christopher Columbus was a navigator and an admiral for Castile, a country that later founded modern Spain...

. The first probable outbreak of the disease was in 1648 in Yucatan

Yucatán

Yucatán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Yucatán is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 106 municipalities and its capital city is Mérida....

, where the illness was termed xekik (black vomit). At least 25 major outbreaks followed, such as in Philadelphia 1793, where several thousand people died and the American administration as well as George Washington

George Washington

George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

 had to flee the city. Major outbreaks also occurred in Europe, e.g. in 1821 in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 with several thousand victims. 1878, about 20,000 people died in an epidemic in the Mississippi River Valley and the last major outbreak in the US occurred in 1905 in New Orleans.

Haiti: 1802

In 1802, an army of forty thousand sent by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte of France to Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

 to suppress the Haitian Revolution

Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...

 was decimated by an epidemic of yellow fever (among the casualties was the expedition's commander and Bonaparte's brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc

Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc was a French Army general and husband to Pauline Bonaparte, sister to Napoleon Bonaparte.-To 1801:...

). Some historians believe Haiti was to be a staging point for an invasion of the United States through Louisiana

Louisiana Purchase

The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S...

 (then still under French control).

New Orleans, Louisiana: 1853

This outbreak claimed 7,849 residents of New Orleans. The press and the medical profession did not alert citizens of the outbreak until the middle of July, after over a thousand had already died. The reason for this silence was that the New Orleans business community feared that word of an epidemic would cause a quarantine to be placed on the city, and commerce would thus be hurt. The outbreak was dramatized, in part, and played a crucial role in the plot of the 1938 film Jezebel starring Bette Davis

Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

.

Norfolk, Virginia: 1855

A ship carrying persons infected with the virus arrived in Hampton Roads

Hampton Roads

Hampton Roads is the name for both a body of water and the Norfolk–Virginia Beach metropolitan area which surrounds it in southeastern Virginia, United States...

 in southeastern Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

 in June 1855. The disease spread quickly through the community, eventually killing over 3,000 people, mostly residents of Norfolk

Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....

 and Portsmouth

Portsmouth, Virginia

Portsmouth is located in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2010, the city had a total population of 95,535.The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard, is a historic and active U.S...

. The Howard Association

Howard Association

Howard Association, a benevolent organization, was formed in Norfolk, Virginia during the 1855 Yellow Fever Epidemic which killed 1 in 3 residents of Norfolk and sister city Portsmouth in Hampton Roads. Contributions were used to set up a hospital and an orphanage, to feed the hungry and to bury...

, a benevolent organization, was formed to help coordinate assistance in the form of funds, supplies, and medical professionals and volunteers which poured in from many other areas, particularly the Atlantic

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

 and Gulf Coast

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...

 areas of the United States.

Lower Mississippi Valley: 1878

The entire Mississippi River Valley from St. Louis south was impacted, as tens of thousands fled the stricken cities of New Orleans, Vicksburg, and Memphis. An estimated 120,000 cases of yellow fever resulted in some 20,000 deaths.

There were several outbreaks of yellow fever in Memphis

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....

 during the 1870s, culminating in the devastating 1878 epidemic (called the Saffron Scourge of 1878 ), with over 5,000 fatalities in the city itself and 20,000 along the whole of the Mississippi River Valley. It has been claimed that the large death toll was due to commercial interests taking precedence over reporting the outbreak of yellow fever.

In 1878 the worst yellow fever epidemic Mississippi had seen ravaged the state. The disease, sometimes known as 'Yellow Jack,' and 'Bronze John,' devastated Mississippi socially and economically. Entire families were wiped out while others fled their homes in panic for the presumed safety of other parts of the state. Quarantine regulations, passed to prevent the spread of the disease, brought trade to a stop. Some local economies never recovered. Beechland, near Vicksburg, became a ghost town because of the epidemic. By the end of the year, 3,227 people had died from the disease.

The French Panama Canal Effort: 1882–1889

The French effort to build a Panama Canal

Panama Canal

The Panama Canal is a ship canal in Panama that joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Built from 1904 to 1914, the canal has seen annual traffic rise from about 1,000 ships early on to 14,702 vessels measuring a total of 309.6...

 was fatally damaged by the prevalence of endemic tropical diseases in the Isthmus. Although malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

was also a serious problem for the French canal builders, the numerous yellow fever fatalities and the fear they engendered made it difficult for the French company to retain sufficient technical staff to sustain the effort. Since the mode of transmission of the disease was unknown, the French response to the disease was limited to care of the sick. Unfortunately, the French hospitals contained many pools of stagnant water, such as basins underneath potted plants, in which mosquitoes could breed. The eventual failure, as a result of the deaths, of the French company licensed to build the canal resulted in a massive financial crisis in France.