The 1853 yellow fever epidemic of the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

and

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

islands resulted in thousands of fatalities. Over 9,000 people died of

yellow fever Yellow fever is a viral disease of typically short duration. In most cases, symptoms include fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains – particularly in the back – and headaches. Symptoms typically improve within five days. In ...

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

alone, around eight percent of the total population. Many of the dead in New Orleans were recent Irish immigrants living in difficult conditions and without any acquired immunity. There was a stark racial disparity in mortality rates: "7.4 percent of whites who contracted yellow fever died, while only 0.2 percent of blacks perished from the disease." As historian Kathryn Olivarius observed in ''Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom'', "For enslaved Blacks, the story was different. Immunity protected them from yellow fever, but as embodied capital, they saw the social and monetary value of their acclimation accrued to their white owners." The epidemic was an international news story. A newspaper in Cambridge, England published this evocative description of the scene in the Crescent City: Apparently one of the most popular treatments in New Orleans was by

Marie Laveau Marie Catherine Laveau (September 10, 1801 – June 15, 1881)''Marie Laveau The Mysterious Voodoo Queen: A Study of Powerful Female Leadership in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans'' by Ina Johanna Fandrich was a Louisiana Creole people, Louisiana ...

, whose practice of voodoo and/or the healing arts in regard to

was so esteemed that "a committee of citizens was appointed to wait upon her, and beg her to lend her aid to the feversmitten, numbers of whom she saved." In addition to death toll in New Orleans: * 1,100 people died in the vicinity of Mobile, Alabama. A volunteer public-health service in the Mobile area called the Can't Get Away Club provided healthcare to the afflicted.

Josiah C. Nott Josiah Clark Nott (March 31, 1804March 31, 1873) was an American surgeon and anthropologist. He is known for his studies into the etiology of yellow fever and malaria, including the theory that they originate from germs. Nott, who owned slaves ...

had predicted a severe outbreak "simply from the fact that I had never known the disease early in the season to attack Vera Cruz, West India Islands and New Orleans" without it being a season of severe disease. * Navigating inland, yellow jack (as it was sometimes called) came to the town of Natchez, Mississippi in July 1853, killing five percent of the population (over 300 residents). In September a local newspaper reported, "Everybody has left town that could, and but very few are left. Business is at a dead stand. But two dry-goods stores were open on Main St. yesterday; most of the merchants have sought temporary locations in the country or neighboring villages. A greater panic never occurred before from a similar cause, among any people. Our streets look desolate indeed, you may walk an hour sometimes and not meet a dozen persons." Correspondence indicates that slave trader C.M. Rutherford and trader-turned-planter Rice C. Ballard intended to file an insurance claim on a 23-year-old enslaved man named Charles Craig, who had apparently been killed by yellow fever. * Yellow fever killed over 500 in Galveston, Texas, in 1853. It arrived in Pensacola in July on the steamer ''Vixen'' and by October had killed 260. * There are a number of 1853 yellow fever victims in the Old Town Key West Cemetery. * The fever was at Port Royal, Jamaica in April through June, killing 10 and then vanished; and in September it landed in Bermuda. Multiple books were written by contemporary doctors and public health officials about the epidemic; the New Orleans

city directory A city directory is a listing of residents, streets, businesses, organizations or institutions, giving their location in a city. It may be arranged alphabetically or geographically or in other ways. Antedating telephone directories, they were i ...

of 1854 included a long essay on the series of major epidemics suffered by the city since before the

Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or app ...

. The fall preceding the 1853 outbreak there were a small number of cases in the Caribbean; the Jamaican cases were documented, in part, in ''The Lancet'' by a surgeon of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

See also

References

Further reading