Yellow fever

Yellow fever epidemics occurred frequently in Pensacola throughout the 19th century. The last epidemic occurred in 1905.

Despite the heroic efforts of Pensacola physicians who risked and sometimes lost their lives treating yellow fever, several factors made control of yellow fever difficult. Prior to the early 1900s, it was not generally understood that yellow fever was transmitted not by person-to-person contact, but by mosquitoes. The first scientific evidence that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes was obtained by Cuban physician and scientist Carlos Finlay in 1881, but his research was not generally accepted until a team lead by Walter Reed reached the same conclusion in 1901.

There was no effective treatment for yellow fever. Even today, treatment in symptomatic and supportive only. The first vaccine was not developed until 1937.

Yellow fever epidemics in Pensacola

Yellow fever epidemics struck Pensacola in the following years. (This list is probably incomplete.)

• 1822

Here are a few excerpts from eyewitness accounts of the epidemic of 1822.

"A terrible epidemic has visited Pensacola... About a hundred and fifty have, in twenty days, been consigned to the tomb, and as many as eighteen have fallen in a single day. Never, perhaps, was a fever more universally fatal, utterly defying the aid of medicine; no instance of a recovery after an attack, has occurred."

"It is impossible to give you an idea of the extent of the calamity which has befallen Pensacola; out of a population of fourteen hundred, which it was said to contain when we arrived, short of four hundred now remain; the rest have either died or made their escape. We are the only American family that remains alive in the place, and there are but very few other Americans here... All our authorities have either died or deserted... You may cast your eyes for hours every day round and not see an individual moving, save the hardened carman with his heavy loaded hearse."

• 1825
• 1834
• 1839

This epidemic was introduced by a patient from New Orleans. He and several physicians attending him all died. Members of the family where he was sick also contracted the disease.

• 1842
• 1843
• 1844
• 1845
• 1846
• 1847
• 1853
• 1867

The epidemic of 1867 struck despite efforts to quarantine ships upon their arrival in Pensacola. Crewmen arriving on ships from locations where yellow fever was active, such as Jamaica and New Orleans, fell ill after their ships had been released from quarantine. The disease spread to Pensacola, Warrington, and Woolsey. Most of the marines at the Navy Yard came down with the disease. Most of the healthy people in Pensacola fled the city. John Brackett estimates that between 150 and 200 persons died of yellow fever in the Pensacola area; many more fell ill but recovered.

• 1873
• 1874

The 1874 epidemic claimed thousands of lives.

Commodore Melanchton B. Woolsey, commandant of the Navy Yard, correctly believed that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes, some years before this was demonstrated scientifically. "He erroneously believed, as others did also, that disease carrying mosquitoes could only fly a few feet high. So Woolsey moved into the third-story cupola. He got his meals, rum (which he claimed was a 'tonic' against the fever) and tobacco for his pipe by lowering a basket on a rope from one of the cupola's windows. One day his servant forgot the rum! Woolsey died soon thereafter."

• 1882
• 1888
• 1905