When you have Yellow Fever, you probably have black vomit. It is black because it contains blood and other yucky things. Why is it called yellow fever, we do not know.
What we do know is that an enormous amount of people in the Mississippi Valley were killed by it in 1878. Bad timing. Emancipation was just a decade earlier. Over half of the victims were Black.
When some Cubans were fleeing the Spanish Revolution or whatever (no points off if you do not care, are annoyed you even have to read this, and will definitely not remember this), came to New Orleans. While quarantine was pretty effective, a non-compliant riverboat caption brought it on up north. His kids got it.
Now, yellow fever spread up the Mississippi River all the way to Memphis. Over half of the citizens of Memphis took off, but the good old boys in country towns staved them off with guns. Really.
In the end 20,000 people were killed by yellow fever, just from pretty much from Natchez to Memphis. To put that in perspective, the entire population of Memphis was a little over 47,000.
The dead cannot be buried fast enough and rows of coffins line the Court House lawn in ghastly waiting for the ghastlier bodies. The ministers are ill of fever. There are not enough hearses. The bodies go to the cemetery in wagons and are buried by members of the family, if they still survive. All day, all night the dead are buried. The only sound, other than those in the cemetery, to shatter the stillness of the night, is the dismal howling of dogs, making a gruesome requiem for the dead.
William Holland, dispatch from September 26th, 1878
The breakout began when Cubans were fleeing the Spanish Revolution and came to New Orleans. While quarantine was pretty effective, a non-compliant riverboat caption brought it on up north. His kids got it, too.
It was eventually figured out that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitos. Netting, not masks. Take that, COVID.
This is a nice and short explanation of what happened narrative by a lovely young articulate woman. Worth watching.
