Yellow Fever and the Black Vomit
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THE YELLOW FEVER AND THE BLACK VOMIT An infectious virus, according to Peter Medewar, is a piece of nucleic acid surrounded by bad news. This is what the virus carried by the female Culicidae Aëdes aegypti mosquito, causing what was known as black vomit, the American plague, yellow jacket, bronze John, dock fever, stranger’s fever (now standardized as the “yellow fever”) actually looks like, Disney-colorized for your entertainment: And this is what the infectious virus causing Rubeola, the incredibly deadly and devastating German measles, looks like, likewise Disney-colorized for your entertainment: Most infectious viruses have fewer than 10 genes, although the virus that caused the small pox was the biggie exception, having from 200 to 400 genes: Then, of course, there is the influenza, which exists in various forms as different sorts of this virus mutate and migrate from time to time from other species into humans — beginning with an “A” variety that made the leap from wild ducks to domesticated ducks circa 2500 BCE. (And then there is our little friend the coma bacillus Vibrio cholerae, that occasionally makes its way from our privies into our water supplies and causes us to come down with the “Asiatic cholera.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX BLACK VOMIT THE YELLOW FEVER On the other hand, the scarlet fever, also referred to as Scarlatina, is an infection caused not by a virus but by one or another of the hemoglobin-liberating bacteria, typically Streptococcus pyogenes. What did the insightful Herman Melville and little ward-of-the- state Laura Bridgman have in common? —their eyes had been damaged by scarlet fever. TB, referred to in the 19th Century by such terms as phthisis, is an infection caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis which contains 4,411,529 coded aminos in the about 4,000 genes of its genome. A common error nowadays is to presume that tuberculosis affected only the lungs. It did not then and it does not now. It can settle in just about any part of the body, causing abscesses and crippling the bones and causing atrophy of the musculature. Humans can contract a human form of tuberculosis or a bovine form. One of the challenges of the 19th Century was to put a number of apparently quite different ailments together, and come to recognize that they were in fact not different diseases, but various forms taken by TB. COMPARING 19TH-CENTURY WITH 21ST-CENTURY TERMINOLOGY: Lung Sickness, Consumption = tuberculosis Galloping Consumption = pulmonary tuberculosis Phthisis Pulmonalis = wasting away of a body part Pott’s Disease = tuberculosis of the spinal vertebrae Scrofula = tuberculosis of lymph nodes or glands of neck 2 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE YELLOW FEVER BLACK VOMIT Bubonic plague is caused by the bacillus Yersina pestis is an infection which is transmitted from rats to humans by the rat flea Xenopsylla cheopsis. Malaria is a relapsing infection characterized by chills and fever, caused by various protozoa of the genus Plasmodium introduced into the bloodstream of reptiles, of birds, and of mammals such as humankind by the Culicidae Anopheles mosquito. (HINT: If you ever want to “go there,” click on one of these icons. Fear not, these are mere virtual viruses.) According to Jared Diamond, native American populations were more affected by the germs of the European intrusives simply because they had had lesser contact with the domesticated species and their diseases: “The major killers of humanity throughout our recent history –small pox, influenza, tuberculosis, malaria, plague, measles, and cholera– are infectious diseases that evolved from diseases of animals, even though most of the microbes responsible for our own epidemic illnesses are paradoxically now almost confined to humans.... [They] evolved out of diseases of Eurasian herd animals that became domesticated. Whereas many such animals existed in Eurasia, only five animals of any sort became domesticated in the Americas [due to the] ... paucity of wild starting material.” — Jared Diamond, GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES (NY: W.W. Norton, 1997, pages 196ff “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX BLACK VOMIT THE YELLOW FEVER 16TH CENTURY 1590 January 28, before dawn: In the Caribbean, Sir Francis Drake had been stricken by a tropical disease known at the time as the “bloody flux,” which perhaps was the yellow fever. He was rising from his sickbed aboard his flagship Defiance to don his armor in order to die as a soldier, and collapsed back onto the cot. The body would be encased in a lead coffin and consigned to the deeps off Puerto Bello, Panama: Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673. Sir Martin Frobisher Commander of the English Fleet slain in the quarrel of H. King of Navarr. The last voyage of Sir Francis Drake, and Sir John Hawkins to the West-Indies with six ships of the Queens, and twelve other ships and Barks containing 2400 men and boyes, in which voyage they both dyed, and Sir Francis Drake’s Coffen was thrown over board near Porto bello. From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent. 4 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE YELLOW FEVER BLACK VOMIT 17TH CENTURY 1600 Fall: Isaac Norris, Sr. recorded that there had been in Philadelphia a great yellow fever epidemic in which five members of his own family had died: “This is quite the Barbadoes distemper: they void and vomit blood. There is not a day nor night has passed for several weeks, but we have the account of the death or sickness of some friend or neighbour. It hath been sometimes very sickly, but I never before knew it so mortal as now; nine persons lay dead in one day at the same time; very few recover. All business and trade down. The fall itself was extremely moderate and open.” 1648 The yellow fever, a monkey/mosquito virus of West Africa, had at this point made its way to Havana and to the Yucatan peninsula. 1683 The 1st microscope having come along in 1590 and the 1st glimpse of microorganisms having been obtained in 1676, in this year improvements in precision allowed bacteria to be viewed for the 1st time. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX BLACK VOMIT THE YELLOW FEVER 1686 The yellow fever struck in Brazil. 1690 The yellow fever struck in Mozambique. 1699 Proprietor William Penn had been away from his colony of Pennsylvania for all of 15 years, but in this year, at the age of 55, he was able to return. (His wife, and his daughter Laetitia, had been attempting to intercept such a return from the courts of Europe into the hostile wilderness. He had, however, the intention of settling there for the rest of his life.) The family’s ocean voyage required all of three months, and when they arrived, the yellow fever, which had been raging in the West Indies, was raging also in Philadelphia. Public Friend (traveling Quaker minister) Thomas Story described this as a time when “Great was the fear that fell on all flesh. I saw no lofty or airy countenance, — nor heard any vain jesting: — but every face gathered paleness, and many hearts were humbled.” 18TH CENTURY 1702 An outbreak of the yellow fever devastated New-York, with 570 deaths. 6 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE YELLOW FEVER BLACK VOMIT 1703 Isaac Norris, Sr. recorded that the yellow fever became in this year a scourge in New-York “such as they had never seen before! Some hundreds died, and many left the town for many weeks, so that the town was almost left desolate.” Friend Thomas Story, the city’s recorder, also reported on this calamity, as a scourge which carried off 6-8 inhabitants daily: “Great was the fear that fell upon all flesh! I saw no lofty or airy countenances, nor heard any vain jesting; but every face gathered paleness, and many hearts were humbled.” About 220 New- Yorkers died, of whom about 80 or 90 were his fellow Quakers. 1730 The yellow fever struck Cadiz, Spain, a port heavily engaged in trade with the Spanish colonies of the New World. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX BLACK VOMIT THE YELLOW FEVER 1741 June-October: 250 persons died during a season of great sickness in Philadelphia. The infection was being referred to as the “Palantine distemper” due to its prevailing among German emigrants, perhaps from their confinement on ship. Noah Webster would record that after the severe winter, the city was severely visited with “the American plague.” The disease, Doctor Bond offered, was the yellow fever, supposed to have been introduced by a load of sick people from Dublin. 1743 Yellow fever again prevailed in Philadelphia and New-York. The case of Joel Neaves, who died in Philadelphia, was described as follows: “He had a true, genuine yellow fever, with black vomit and spots, and suppression of urine — all this from overheating himself in a very hot day, by rowing a boat. He also gave it to others about him, and they to others; yet but few of them died.” 1762 The yellow fever struck Philadelphia, but this time the impact was relatively minor. The enormous impact would not appear until 1793, when the city was our new national capital. Benjamin Rush began his scholarly work by translating Hippocrates’s APHORISMS into English. In addition, in this year, the 17-year-old made OBSERVATIONS ON YELLOW FEVER. 1764 The yellow fever struck hard at Philadelphia. 8 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE YELLOW FEVER BLACK VOMIT 1767 The Reverend Joseph Priestley devised carbonated water, hoping it would prevent the yellow fever.