Compiled by Wayne Blanchard January 6, 2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/

— >613 Blanchard tally based on numbers below.*

–>32 Key West, FL

–337 Natchez, MS

–239 New Orleans, LA

— 5 New York Marine Hospital

*Blanchard note: 613 would be a minimum number of deaths. Some people who had contracted yellow fever in Natchez or New Orleans, for example, would travel elsewhere and might die or pass on the disease by being bitten by a mosquito who would then bite someone else and pass along the disease. It is unreasonable to believe that yellow fever was restricted to just the four locales noted (not including the NY Marine Hospital where the five deaths reported there was probably accurate). Additionally we do not know how many servicemen died in Key West or elsewhere after being removed from Key West. The eleven enlisted men specifically noted by Sobocinski we view as only a beginning of an understanding of how many enlisted died given the note that “an untold number of enlisted” died.

Florida (>32)

–<32 Thompson’s Island (Key West) [“at least 21 officers and an untold number of enlisted”.][1] Earlier noted that 11 enlisted had died before Navy Secretary ordered a team

Louisiana ( 239) (July start, became epidemic in Aug.)

— 239 New Orleans. Augustin, George. History of Yellow Fever. 1909.

— 1 “ U.S. Marine-Hospital Service. Annual Report…FY 1895. 1896, p. 434.

Mississippi (~337) (Aug 12-Nov 1)

— ~20 Coonville, crossroads near Washington (~Natchez). Monette. Observations. 1842, p. 65.

— 5 country outside of Coonville. Monette 1842, p. 65.

— 312 Natchez Keating. A History of the Yellow Fever Epidemic… 1879, pp. 84-85.

— 312 Natchez Sternberg. Yellow Fever… 1908, p. 719.

–~320 Natchez Monette. Observations…Epidemic Yellow Fever of Natchez…1842, p. 64.

— 15 “ Aug 21. Torch Light, Hagerstown, MD. “Dreadful Sickness at Natchez,” 9-23-1823, 2

New York ( 5)

— 5 NY Marine Hospital. U.S. Marine-Hospital Service. Annual Report…FY 1895.1896, 434.

Key West (Thompson’s Island at the time), FL:

Sobocinski, André B. “Navy Medicine and the Investigation on Thompson’s Island, 1823.”

“When the United States acquired the Spanish colony of Florida in 1821, Key West was nothing more than a sleepy fishing village known originally known as Cayo Huesa (“Bone Reef”). Seeing the strategic value of the property, the Navy took control over Key West in March 1822 and renamed it ‘Thompson’s Island’ in honor of the Secretary of the Navy, Smith Thompson.

“For a time, Thompson’s Island was the home of the Navy’s West Indies Squadron and its base of operations in a campaign against the last vestige of Caribbean pirates. It was not long however before disease overtook piracy as the greatest threat to the squadron.

“In 1823, Thompson’s Island served as the site for one of the first military medical investigations into the cause of Yellow Fever. The trouble began on August 19, 1823 when a sailor from the schooner USS Decoy came ashore suffering muscle aches and gastrointestinal pain. Surgeon Mordecai Morgan, USN, the patient’s attending physician, found the sailor’s skin cool and clammy; his respiration short, his ‘vomit black,’ ‘yellowness was diffused over his face, neck and breast,’ ‘Blood oozed out from every little pimple and abrasion of the surface’ and ‘he had all the usual precursory signs of death.’

“The sickness soon spread throughout the island. Within a week over 30 sailors and Marines were stricken with Yellow Fever. Even Commodore David Porter, commander of the naval station, was reported to be in a ‘state of great debility.’

“On September 21^st, the new Secretary of the Navy, Samuel Southard reported to President James Monroe that 11 sailors had died on Thompson’s Island and at least 21 others, including the station’s surgeons, were sick.

“Southard ordered a special Navy mission to Thompson’s Island to ‘investigate with utmost care the origins, progress and present state of the sickness which prevails on the island and in the Squadron.’ Commodore John Rodgers, USN was assigned with overseeing a team–what we would now call a ‘medical task force’—’comprised of three of the Navy’s most accomplished physicians –Surgeons Thomas Harris, Richard K. Hoffman, and Bailey Washington. Each were assigned to Rodgers aboard the schooner USS Shark.

“Rodgers and his medical team arrived on the island on October 23, 1823 only to discover that Commodore Porter and much of the station had fled the sickness. Of the 140 sailors and Marines remaining, 59 were sick with fever, several of whom were being treated at the makeshift hospital under the care of Surgeon Thomas Williamson, USN. Rodgers noted that the fever had become quite mild, but also the sailors had become quite ‘unruly’ in Porter’s absence.

“The surgeons submitted a report to Secretary Southard on October 29^th outlining six causes of the Yellow Fever outbreak:

“1. ‘From sudden exposure of Northern constitutions to a tropical climate a period when the ordinary relaxing effects of a change from a cold to a warm season were aggravated by a difference of fourteen or fifteen degrees southern latitude. From this cause, they were, in the space of two or three weeks, operated upon by an increase of temperature of at least fifty degrees.’

“2. ‘From the great fatigue and exposure, by day and night, of officers and crews engaged in the boat service, and from want of comfortable quarters for those who encamped on the island.

“3. ‘From irregular, and frequently, intemperate habits.’

“4. ‘From being often deprived of fresh and wholesome provisions.’

“5. ‘From continued annoyance of Moschetoes [sic] and sand-flies, which deprived the men of their accustomed rest.

“6. ‘From being operated upon the depressing passions, arising from apprehension awakened by the prevailing epidemic and by the obvious want of comfort of those who here affected with disease.’

“Most interestingly, the surgeons noted that the disease only seemed to be present when the temperature exceeded fifty degrees. It could be argued that they were just twelve degrees away from a significant breakthrough. Mosquitoes will not bite when the temperatures drop below 62 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Although the fever on the island subsided as the weather cooled, at least 21 officers and an untold number of enlisted, died during the outbreak. Others would follow when Spring and Summer returned and temperatures grew warmer….

“Harris, Hoffman, and Washington had gone as far as medical science could (or went) without pinpointing the mosquito as the sole cause of the epidemic. Science was still 77 years away before identifying the Aedes Egypti as the purveyor of Yellow Fever….”

Natchez and Vicinity, Mississippi:

Aug 23: “Cincinnati, Sept. 9. By the following extract from a letter dated Natchez, August 23d, it appears that the inhabitants of that city are visited by an epidemic of the most malignant kind:

‘Within a few days the city of Natchez has presented nothing but a scene of consternation and confusion — people packing up and moving into the country, in consequence of the fever raging with unusual violence for this season of the year. Nearly half the inhabitants had left town the day before yesterday, and there were 15 carried to the grave yard on that day’.” (The Torch Light &Public Advertiser (Hagerstown, MD) “Dreadful Sickness at Natchez,” Sep 23, 1823, p.2)

Childs: “The yellow-fever appeared at Natchez, and out of its population of three thousand, all, excepting between three and four hundred, fled the place.” (Childs 1886, p. 84.)

Monette: “The epidemic of 1823. — This was probably the most terrific that has ever visited Natchez, or any other city of its population. The first cases occurred between the 12th and 20th of August. It continued to rage with great mortality until checked by frost near the first of November. By that time about 320 souls had died from this disease….

“As soon as the disease was pronounced epidemic in Natchez this summer, as usual every family who had the means of escape, left the city. A few days afterwards, when the disease began to rage, ten or twelve families, including about sixty souls, removed to a cross-roads near Washington, known as Coonville, and there erected sheds and huts for a temporary residence. Being of the poorer class, they brought with them their beds, clothing, and all their movables, which were crowded into their small, ill-ventilated apartments. Here they remained in apparent security for a week or ten days, when cases of yellow fever began to develop among them. In a few days it spread among them with great mortality, and in a few weeks there were about twenty deaths among them, besides as many recoveries. The disease assumed its most malignant character here., and was precisely the same disease that prevailed in Natchez, and was equally fatal. At this time the whole country was as healthy as usual, and no disease of the kind existed any where, except where the infection could be traced to Natchez….

“…five persons who had visited Coonville, and had been exposed to no other source of infection, contracted the disease and died in the country….

“Dr. Cartwright, in a lengthy essay published in the Medical Recorder,[2] ascribed the epidemic in Natchez this year to a lot of putrescent bacon in the south-west part of the city, aided by other putrescent animal matters supposed to have existed about the city. As to the bacon, I have long since been assured by Col. Fleming Wood, the alleged proprietor of the bacon, that the information on that subject was entirely erroneous; and that no such lot of bacon was in the city. Scarcely any one is sufficiently credulous, or so biased by theory, as to believe that Natchez, which is known to be one of the most cleanly cities in the South, should be so infested with carrion, and other putrid matters, as are supposed to be necessary to bring on an epidemic. If any stranger were credulous enough to entertain such a belief, he would at once repudiate the idea when he should learn that Natchez has long been rather remarkable for the number of half-starved, rapacious vultures, which hover round in anxious expectation of such matters, which they devour in less than half the time required for the same performance by northern carrion-crows.”

(Monette, John W. Observations on the Epidemic Yellow Fever of Natchez and of the South-West. Louisville, KY: Prentice and Weissinger, 1842 (pp. 65-66). Digitized by U.S. National Library of Medicine. Accessed 8-15-2013 at: http://archive.org/details/65030290R.nlm.nih.gov )

New Orleans, Louisiana

Monette: “This summer yellow fever made its appearance quite early in New Orleans: many cases occurred among the ships’ crews and others about the wharves as early as July; and it became epidemic about the first week in August. The arrival of steamboats from New Orleans was a thing of daily occurrence before the epidemic put a check to all kinds of business.” (Monette 1842, p.65.)

Sources

Augustin, George. History of Yellow Fever. New Orleans: Published for the Author by Search & Pfaff Ltd., 1909; General Books reprint, Memphis, TN, 2010. 1909 copy digitized at: http://archive.org/stream/historyofyellowf00auguuoft#page/n4/mode/1up

Childs, Emery E. A History of the United States In Chronological Order From the Discovery of America in 1492 to the Year 1885. NY: Baker & Taylor, 1886. Google digitized. Accessed 9-4-2017: http://books.google.com/books?id=XLYbAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Keating, J. M. A History of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tenn. Memphis, TN: Howard Association, 1879. Google preview accessed 3-16-2018 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=WEIJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Monette, John W. Observations on the Epidemic Yellow Fever of Natchez and of the South-West. Louisville, KY: Prentice and Weissinger, 1842. Digitized by U.S. National Library of Medicine. Accessed 8-15-2013 at: http://archive.org/details/65030290R.nlm.nih.gov

Sobocinski, André B., Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. “Navy Medicine and the Investigation on Thompson’s Island, 1823.” Navy Medicine 2 January 2012. Accessed 1-7-2023 at: https://www.med.navy.mil/Media/News/Article/2609730/navy-medicine-and-the-investigation-on-thompsons-island-1823/

Sternberg, George M. (US Public Health Service, US Marine Hospital Service). “Yellow Fever: History and Geographic Distribution.” Pages 715-722 in Stedman, Thomas L., M.D. (Ed.) Appendix to the Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences. NY: William Wood & Co., 1908. Google preview accessed 3-18-2018 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=3ezqX415M5wC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

The Torch Light & Public Advertiser, Hagerstown, MD. “Dreadful Sickness at Natchez,” 9-23-1823, p. 2. Accessed at: http://www.newspaperarchive.com

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, DC: GPO, 1896. Google preview accessed 3-16-2018 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

[1] Sobocinski, André B. “Navy Medicine and the Investigation on Thompson’s Island, 1823.” Navy Medicine, Jan 2, 2012.

[2] Cites: Medical Recorder, Vol. ix, pp. 5-7.

1823 — July-Nov 1, Yellow Fever, Natchez, MS/337, New Orleans (239), Key West/>32–>613