A Looney Tune cartoon character summed up the matter concisely: “Of course you know this means war.” The epidemic rampaged throughout the Mississippi Valley. It killed about twenty-thousand people and inflicted economic losses of over 200 million dollars. A frost came to Memphis, Tennessee on October 18, but it did not kill all of the mosquitoes and the fever continued to spread. A hard, killing frost occurred on October 28 and the officials declared an end to the epidemic on the following day. People during the Gilded Age knew that cold temperatures stopped the spread of the disease. Yet, they never connected the dots and correlated the disease to an insect vector. After all, what dies immediately when the weather turns cold? Yellow fever had struck many times before even if the 1878 epidemic became the worst of all. The close of the 1878 fever season did not constitute the beginning of the end. It represented the end of the beginning. The massive loss of life and disruption of commerce left southern officials highly agitated and pissed off. The rational response to the disease entered a second, long-term phase. Congressman H. Casey Young served Memphis in the House of Representatives. He telegraphed a request to President Rutherford Hayes on August 26, 1878. He proposed that the federal government establish a commission to scientifically investigate the disease. Two attributes came to the forefront during the epidemic: grace and faith. People had to have grace in order to maintain their fortitude in the face of an unbearable situation. People had to have faith in order to nurture hope in the ability of institutions to recover. Science seemed to have failed the Memphians. Yet, they held onto their faith in its ability to deliver them. Young proposed “a special commission of the ablest physicians and chemists in the country for the purpose of scientifically investigating the cause, nature, treatment, and future prevention of the fearful epidemic now raging.” Providence would eventually reward them for their confidence in medical science. Despite their humiliation and bewilderment, these people had the intellect to know that even mighty Bronze John had to have an Achilles’ heel. They knew that they had better find it soon in order to save the Mississippi Valley from continued oppression. The Yellow Fever Commission of Experts began an investigation that would present a scientific characterization of the disease. It found neither the cause nor the cure to the disease, but this commission initiated a process that would eventually empower humanity to effectively fight epidemics. The members of the Commission began surrounding the plague and systematically laying siege to it. Understanding and research became their weapo
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 20:49:01 +0000
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