Yellow Fever

Yellow Fever - Part 1

The Yellow Fever

While most people seem to know that there was an epidemic of Yellow Fever in Memphis, relatively few people know how often and harshly the disease struck. Men who had traveled around the world said that Memphis was the filthiest and most foul smelling city on earth.

While open sewers contributed to the unpleasant odor they also provided breeding grounds for the mosquitos transmitting the disease. Not know that the fever was borne by mosquitos little was done to improve that situation for almost 40 years. This type of ignorance is natural enough, but in time it was the general feeling that the problem would go away if the city were not so dirty and foul. This indirectly led to the removal of the mosquito breeding grounds and the spread of the disease. By the time that happened the city was largely broke and abandoned.

Like any intriguing story this one would probably be told best if told from the beginning...

See also: Yellow Fever Defined

During the 1800s Memphis was considered a very swampy area, and it was. Many cities in the 1800s suffered from heat and humidity that contribute to sickness in people not born with resistance to such diseases. For that reason Native Americans and African Americans had a much higher survival rate (up to 500% better) of Yellow Fever and Malaria than the inhabitants of European descent. The “sickle cell“ trait is an example of an evolved immunity that saved Africans from malaria.

So why not leave and go somewhere healthier? Many people did. Largely only the poor did not relocate during the very worst of the outbreaks due to lack of means. There were some who stayed, such as J.M. Keating, editor of the Memphis Appeal, Robert Church Sr. who bought up property and bargain basement prices and a number of dedicated health workers whose contributions we will discuss further.

Aedes Aegypti Mosquito

The fourth Chickasaw Bluff upon which Memphis is situated has been a very unhealthy place for Europeans since the first European arrived here. Even today Memphians and visitors alike have trouble breathing the air which has always been full of airborne allergens. While the French, Spanish and English fought over this advantageous parcel of land, mosquito-borne diseases often killed them as surely as smallpox killed the natives.

Yellow Fever first struck Europeans in America in 1668-69 in and around the New York / Philadelphia area. Yellow Fever is generally said to have first attacked Americans of European descent in Memphis in 1828 when there were 650 cases and 150 deaths. The deadliness of the disease is magnified when one considers that the population was still well under 1,000 at that time.

Over the next 50 years there would be six more outbreaks with the following results:

1828 - First yellow fever epidemic; 650 cases, 150 deaths.

1855 - Second yellow fever epidemic: 1,250 cases, 220 deaths.

1867 - Third yellow fever epidemic: 2,500 cases, 550 deaths.

1873 - Fourth yellow fever epidemic: 5,000 cases, 2,000 deaths.

1878 - Fifth yellow fever empidemic: 5,000 deaths.

1879 Sixth yellow fever epidemic: 2,000 cases, 600 deaths.

In a seventeen year period from 1862 to 1879 Memphis saw occupation by Union troops, the worst race riot in the nation's history, four yellow fever outbreaks taking over 8,000 lives and the loss of the city's charter due to decreased population and bankruptcy.

The worst two Yellow Fever outbreaks occured in 1873 and 1878 with the second of these being catastrophic in the extreme. After the 2,000 deaths in 1873 tensions were high in Memphis and there was an ongoing debate on how the city should act to diffuse or eliminate the next onset. There was a general feeling that something about the city's general filthiness might be at play, but that was where agreement ended.