1876 — Yellow Fever, esp. Savannah GA/900-1K, Brunswick GA, Baltimore, NOLA  –1,293

–1,293  Blanchard tally based on numbers below.

Georgia:         (1,004-1,184)              (Aug 21-Dec 1)

–1,004-1,184

—   112  Brunswick                                         U.S. Marine Hosp. Svc.  An. Rpt.…1895. 1896, 439.

—     >5  Isle of Hope[1] Sep 22 start                 Augustin.  History of Yellow Fever, 1909, 464.

—       1  Oliver Station           Sep 10             Augustin.  History of Yellow Fever, 1909, 464.

–1,066  Savannah                   Aug 21-Dec 1 Augustin.  History of Yellow Fever, 1909, 466.

–1,065            “                                              Delorme. “Yellow Fever: Savannah’s…1876…”

—   896            “                      Aug-Nov         Jones 1884, p. 210.

“          Month             White  Black   Total[2]

Aug                   35        2          37

Sep                  483      66        549

Oct                  212      52        264

Nov                   41        5          46

Maryland       (    74)

–74  Fell’s Point and Marine Hosp., Baltimore. Quinan. Medical Annals of Baltimore. 1884, 47.[3]

New Orleans  (     35)            Sep 3-Oct 13

—  35  Holt. “Analysis of the Record of Yellow Fever in New Orleans, in 1876.” Jan 1877, 4.[4]

 Narrative Information

 Holt:  “After the labors of the medical profession, m this city and elsewhere, during the last sixty j-ears, this rate of mortality would seem to indicate how little is to be hoped from an improved treatment of those attacked. It would seem to show that, in this particular we have made no step in the general advancement of applied medical science. Even granting that all practitioners possess a consummate skill in the treatment of yellow fever, there are so many requisites to recovery other than the administration of drugs, (frequently the most hazardous and least important of all) such as skillful and constant nursing, the avoidance of every imprudence in exposure and dieting, a favorable state of the weather, no dangerous and unaccountable change in the symptoms demanding instant attention, that when many are attacked, these requirements cannot be complied with, and therefore failure must often result. No amount of medical skill can neutralize the mischievous effects of poverty and ignorance in determining the death-rate of this disease. The larger the number of cases, the more forcibly does this apply.

 

“The history of yellow fever teaches that the mortality is great, even under the most favorable circumstances. This would seem to indicate a necessity of turning our attention from the vain endeavor to combat the disease by au improved treatment of the sick, to the other alternative, its actual prevention.”

 

“…From the time of its appearance, on the 3d of September, to the last case on the record, October 13th, the visitation continued forty days.” (Holt 1877, p. 4.)

 

Sources:

 

Augustin, George.  History of Yellow Fever.  New Orleans:  1909; General Books reprint, Memphis, TN, 2010.

 

Delorme, Rita H. “Yellow Fever: Savannah’s deadly 1876 epidemic.” Southern Cross (The Official Newspaper of the Diocese of Savannah). 6-13-2014. Accessed 12-7-2019 at: https://southerncross.diosav.org/features-20140613-yellow-fever

 

Holt, Joseph. “Analysis of the Record of Yellow Fever in New Orleans, in 1876” (Paper read before the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Association, November 11, 1876). New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Jan 1877, 16 pages, p. 4. Accessed 8-23-2013 at: http://cdm16313.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/LSUBK01/id/5134/rec/8

 

Jones, Joseph, M.D., President of the Board of Health of the State of Louisiana. Contagious and Infectious Diseases, Measures for Their Prevention and Arrest. Small Pox (Variola); Modified Small Pos (Varioloid); Chicken Pox (Varicella); Cow Pox (Variola Vaccinal): Vaccination, Spurious Vaccination Illustrated by Eight Colored Plates (Circular No. 2, Prepared for the Guidance of the Quarantine Officers and Sanitary Inspectors of the Board of Health of the State of Louisiana.). Baton Rouge: Leon Jastremski, State Printer, 1884. Accessed 2-12-2015 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=3VTboPycbBgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Quinan, John R., M.D. Medical Annals of Baltimore From 1608-1880, Including Events, Men and Literature, to Which is Added A Subject Index and Record of Public Services. Baltimore: Press of Isaac Friedenwald, 1884. Google digitized. Accessed 1-14-2015 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=xNcRAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

United States Marine Hospital Service, Treasury Department. Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1895 (Document No. 1811). Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896. Digitized by Google at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

 

 

 

[1] This is our stand-in estimate based on Augustin’s notation of two deaths and the statement that “From these cases the disease spread, and many fatal cases occurred.”

[2] Data “prepared by Dr. William Duncan, and embodied in the annual report of Hon. Edward C. Anderson, Mayor of the City of Savannah for the year 1877.”

[3] “Yellow or Typho-Malignant Fever at Fell’s Point; 71 cases, 59 deaths, and 27 cases and 15 deaths at Marine Hospital. ‘Eighty per cent. of the cases die’ (A. B. Arnold).”

[4] Dr. Holt was the Sanitary Inspector for the Fourth District in New Orleans. States that “out of seventy-four cases, thirty-five were fatal…most of those who recovered manifested dangerous symptoms, many of them escaping so narrowly as to occasion special wonder.”