You woke up a week ago feeling odd. You were not sure what was wrong, but your body was full of aches, you felt hot to the touch, and you kept vomiting. Your mother told you to lay down and rest, hoping it was just a cold. After a few days, you began to feel better, well enough that you wanted to return to the river to watch the trade ships come in. Now, unfortunately, your symptoms have come back with a vengeance – your fever is back along with intense abdominal pain, your mouth is bleeding without being wounded, and every time you vomit, it appears black in color. Also, when you look in the mirror, your skin has changed from the sun-kissed color you have always been to a dull yellow hue. The doctor comes in to examine you; he makes many “tsk tsk” noises and hurries out of the room with a cloth over his face. The doctor mumbles to your mother that he believes you have Yellow Jack and there is nothing more he can do, you are going to die. Your mother weeps uncontrollably yet you cannot react because another horrendous pain in your head has doubled you over. Soon, as you stop shaking and begin to relax, the sounds of the doctor and your mother become white noise and your surroundings begin to dull until you prove the doctor right; another person fell victim to the infectious Yellow Fever virus.
There is no definitive history or discovery date, but it is assumed that Yellow Fever originated in Africa and was brought to the Americas by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes “hitchhiking” on trade and slave ships. The first believed outbreak happened in 1648 in the Yucatán. It is “believed” because early documentation of disease and illness was not thoroughly investigated or described, they could have been caused by one thing or another. There is ...
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...Organization summed it up best by stating “yellow fever is still considered to be a public health emergency of international concern,” (Yellow Fever WHO).
Works Cited
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Dickerson, James L. Yellow Fever: A Deadly Disease Poised to Kill Again. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006. Print.
Murphy, Jim. An American Plague: the True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. New York, NY: Clarion Books, 2003. Print.
Shmaefsky, Brian R. Yellow Fever. New York, NY: Chelsea House, 2010. Print.
“Yellow Fever.” www.cdc.gov. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
“Yellow Fever.” www.who.int/en. World Health Organization, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
At some point in a person's life, they must make the transition from childhood to adulthood. Many of a persons early life experiences can contribute to this transition, even if it is the simplest of things. Yellow Fever hit Philadelphia hard in 1793. It also hit hard in the book Fever: 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. In this book, fourteen year-old Mattie Cook?s life gets turned upside-down when Yellow Fever strikes Philadelphia. In her adventure, Mattie must show responsibility, and experience the pain of death before she matures into an adult.
The book jumps to a distressing story about Peter Los in 1970 in West Germany who became ill due to smallpox. After ten days he was hospitalized but medical staff did not realize he had smallpox, which is highly contagious. Preston gives vivid descriptions of the disease and how it ravages the body. Los survived his illness, but caused an epidemic that killed many others that had become exposed to him. “Today, the people who plan for a smallpox emergency can’t get the image of the Meschede hospital out of their minds.
...Andrew L. “Yellow Fever and the Late Colonial Public Health Response in the Port of Veracruz.” Hispanic American Historical Review 77, no. 4 (1997): 619-644.
Blackbird's book, like many similar autoethnographic texts, is a combination of autobiography, history, ethnography, and polemic. He opens with a conventional reference to inaccuracy in current histories. In the course of correcting the record he relates the story, preserved by elders of his nation, of a smallpox epidemic during the height of the French and Indian War, about 1757. Blackbird's story is unique because of the unusual disease vector.
The medical field is a vast land of beauty but with great beauty comes immense horror. There are many deadly viruses and diseases found in the medical field. In the novel, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, the author discusses the many deadly viruses found in the field. The viruses are widespread due to the errors that occur when the viruses are in the presence of human beings. The effects of the errors performed by the human race include a decrease in population and wildlife. The viruses are spread in many different ways in the novel, but all are due to human mistakes.
The yellow-fever started in Memphis, Tennessee in a restaurant and soon spread fast across the state and neighboring states. “Yellow fever, which is carried by mosquitos, originally came from West Africa and was brought to the United States on slaves ships” (History, 2009). The impact of the yellow-fever blamed and hated African Americans for spreading it in America. Some politicians that wanted to abolish slavery took this event as something positive for the black. The antislavery followers viewed yellow-fever as the slave owners fault since it was their slave ships that brought the infected to US soil. In the end, this influence both has a good and bad affect for the African American
Yellow fever is a horrible disease for those who begin to show symptoms, and while that number is low, of those who do become ill 50% die; only after having two rounds ...
If it does become a pandemic our current political, demographical, and psychological state will surely be
The summer of 1793 was very dark one for the town of Philadelphia. It was the year a terrible yellow fever outbreak took over Philadelphia and killed about 5,000 citizens or 10% of the Philadelphia population in just 3 months. This event rocks the life of everyone in Philadelphia and one particular teenage girl, Matilda “Mattie” Cook.
No other epidemic reaches the level of the Black Death which took place from 1348 to 1350. The epidemic, better regarded as a pandemic, shook Europe, Asia, and North Africa; therefore it deems as the one of the most devastating events in world history. In The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350, John Aberth, compiles primary sources in order to examine the origins and outcomes of this deadly disease. The author, a history professor and associate academic dean at Vermont’s Castleton State College, specializes in medieval history and the Black Death. He wrote the book in order to provide multiple perspectives of the plague’s impact. Primarily, pathogens started the whole phenomenon; however, geological, economic, and social conditions
States. That same year a yellow fever epidemic killed 5,000 people in New Orleans. In
"The Plague." Novels for Students. Ed. David M. Galens. Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale, 2002. 202-222. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 3 Apr. 2011.
Imagine a world where there was a great chance of a mother dying right after giving birth to her child. Sounds like a pretty crazy supposition. Unfortunately, not too long ago, that was the world we called home. Nuland’s book discusses the unfortunate tragedies of puerperal fever and the journey the medical field in Europe took to discover a cause and prevention. Hand in hand, Nuland also depicts the life of Ignác Semmelweis, the unknown founder of the aforementioned cause and prevention strategies: washing hands in chloride of lime. The Doctors’ Plague is a worthwhile read based off the information provided, its ability to break new ground, and the credibility of its author and sources.
Murphy, Jim. An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic 1793. New York, New York: Clariton Book, 2003. Print.
In the 1960s, doctors in the United States predicted that infectious diseases were in decline. US surgeon Dr. William H. Stewart told the nation that it had already seen most of the frontiers in the field of contagious disease. Epidemiology seemed destined to become a scientific backwater (Karlen 1995, 3). Although people thought that this particular field was gradually dying, it wasn’t. A lot more of it was destined to come. By the late 1980s, it became clear that people’s initial belief of infectious diseases declining needed to be qualified, as a host of new diseases emerged to infect human beings (Smallman & Brown, 2011).With the current trends, the epidemics and pandemics we have faced have created a very chaotic and unreliable future for mankind. As of today, it has really been difficult to prevent global epidemics and pandemics. Although the cases may be different from one state to another, the challenges we all face are all interconnected in this globalized world.