han twenty percent of patients died after showing signs and symptoms of yellow fever. “After the bite of the infecting mosquito, it takes several days before symptoms appear” (Grunfeld, 2006). Due to the delay of symptoms, many of those infected spread the disease unknowing. “The disease characteristically began with high fevers, shaking chills that progressed to rigors, tachycardia, photophobia, conjunctival injection, petechiae, muscle pains, and headaches. The disease was punctuated by bleeding from the gums, epigastric discomfort, bilious vomiting, diarrhea, and melena. Jaundice, for which the disease was given its nickname “Yellow Jack,” subsequently developed. Following a respite, where symptoms abated, there would be an exacerbation of all previous symptoms plus bloody diarrhea, black-stained vomitus, coma, and death” (Thompson, O’Leary, 1996).

In the beginning of epidemic, physicians were unsure of treatment plans for early symptoms were mistaken for other diseases such as influenza. “The physicians knew not how to treat this uncommon disorder, which was suddenly caught and proved suddenly fatal. The calamity was so general, that few could grant assistance to their neighbors. So many funerals happening everyday, while so many lay sick, that white persons sufficient for burying the dead were scarcely to be found” (Simons, 1852). Unfortunately, yellow fever was a death sentence.

Treatment

“At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no cure for yellow fever. The best that medical authorities could do was to quarantine the afflicted. Those quarantines usually waved the warning yellow flag, which gave the disease its colloquial name, “yellow jack” (Grunfeld, 2008). There were many poorly trained physicians who had no experiences with an infection of this magnitude.