protection methods. People were left in the dark with the true severity of the infection and well as close by cases.
“When informed of the first cases of yellow fever that appear in summer, the newspaper press almost invariably denies the truth of the reports, and, not unfrequently, showers upon the heads of those whose duty it is to pronounce upon the character of the prevailing disease, volumes of abuse and ridicule. If the cases multiply and the sign of the times plainly indiare the approach of an epidemic, the able editors of our valuable daily journals, under what i must pronounce a most erroneous impression of their duty to the public, studiously endeavour to conceal or suppress the true state of affairs” (Fenner, 2008).
Newspapers were hesitant to release stories regarding yellow fever because businesses feared that word of an epidemic would cause a quarantine to be placed on the city and trade would suffer. In their defense, there was no trained physicians that could properly treat yellow fever so it became difficult to write a story solely based on guesses. “A cartoon posted in the Daily Item mocked the handling of fever cases in New Orleans by depicting sufferers from non-fever maladies, like a toothache and a broken arm, as yellow fever cases according to the Board of Health. By doing so, the newspaper vocalized its disapproval of the Louisiana Board of Health’s handling of fever cases and the medical knowledge of the board’s employed physicians” (Runge, 2013). People were aggravated with the lack of awareness and accuracy from journals, so they found comic relief in making fun of them.
“Journals began to comment on the pestilence, blaming the city council and its do-nothing policy. Under tremendous pressure from public opinion and urged on by the Mayer, the Council on july 25 finally appointed a Board of Health” (Carrigan, 1853).
Pathophysiology
“The phenomenon of yellow fever was like a jigsaw puzzle with a number of missing pieces. Until those pieces were discovered the picture remained distorted until the discovery of the insect vector, the irregular spread of the pestilence presented a knotty problem in logic to speculative minds” (Carrigan, 1853).
U.S Army surgeon Major Walter Reed made the first important contribution
