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Thesis ID: CBB001562769

Hurricane and the Human Frame: Yellow Fever, Race, and Public Health in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (2010)

University of California, Santa Cruz

Publication Date: 2010
Physical Details: 289 pp.
Language: English

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Epidemiology Yellow fever Medicine and race Public health 19th century United States New Orleans (Louisiana, U.S.) United States. Public Health Service

This dissertation examines the history of epidemic yellow fever in New Orleans from 1796 to 1905. In New Orleans, the earliest recorded outbreaks of yellow fever appeared in the 1790s, in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution, and continued until 1905, when the U.S. Public Health Service intervened and enforced mosquito-eradication policies in the city. Framing the history of the emergence, spread, and decline yellow fever in New Orleans in a world historical context reveals how global events shaped the epidemiological history of the city. Epidemic yellow fever appeared in New Orleans due to a confluence of world historical factors, including the maritime revolution and transatlantic trade, which led to the rise of slavery and sugar production in the region. These factors created a disease environment that was hospitable to the yellow fever virus and its host mosquito. During the antebellum period, the fever prevailed as a result of the expanding sugar industry, immigration, and urban development. When the fever became endemic in the city between 1817 and 1857, contemporaries formed various ideologies of immunity, which reflected social tensions, initially between creoles and newcomers, followed by sectional and race-based tensions between the mid- 1850s and the turn of the century. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the enforcement of public health legislation appeared to help quell yellow fever epidemics. However, other factors such as the demise of slavery and the slave trade, as well as the decline of sugar production and immigration, contributed to the decline of yellow fever. Yellow fever epidemics continued to appear in New Orleans, though less frequently, until the enforcement of mosquito eradication campaigns during the epidemic of 1905. These campaigns were part of a series of imperial campaigns, initiated by the U.S. Public Health Service, which began during the U.S. occupation of Havana after the Spanish-American War. In a global context, over the course of the twentieth century, yellow fever has become more common in tropical jungles and savannahs in Africa and South America, and continues to threaten human populations in these regions.

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Description Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. : doc. no. 3424537.

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