Dreaded Yellow Jack
23 AUGUST 1819
DREADED YELLOW JACK
On this date, 34-year-old Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the War of 1812, died aboard the schooner USS NONSUCH, 14, in Trinidad. He and many of his crew had contracted yellow fever on a diplomatic mission to Venezuela.
Malaria, dysentery and typhoid were steady killers in the tropical Americas, but none stirred the public panic that attended yellow fever outbreaks, due in part to this disease’s 50% mortality and its rapid progression–hale by morning; jaundiced, prostrate, and deathly ill by evening. “Yellow jack” was the scourge that condemned the mythical Flying Dutchman to haunt the seas, and its seemingly random outbreaks were well-known to our Navy. Though epidemics struck as far north as Memphis in 1878 and Philadelphia in 1793, it was the experience of the trans-Panamanian railway from 1850-55 that engendered the greatest public awareness of yellow fever. Deaths among construction laborers on this project were so great that disposal of the bodies led to a thriving subsidiary industry. The Panama Railroad Company became the leading supplier of cadavers, pickled and distributed in barrels to medical schools and hospitals the world over.
Prolific medical research was devoted to yellow jack. One observation was contributed by Navy Surgeon John F. Bransford, who accompanied the 1872-73 trans-isthmanian canal surveying expedition to Nicaragua and a similar Panamanian expedition two years later. Pre-dating Army CAPT Walter Reed by years, Bransford recognized that mosquito netting provided protection–he reasoned “by straining the air of germs and moisture.” Unfortunately, Bransford’s work lay under-credited for years.
Medical progress was hampered by prevailing wisdom that yellow fever resulted from exposure to noxious vapors given off by rotting organic matter, such as that found in jungle soil, (hence its association with digging the railroad bed), or in the filth of cities dispossessed of sewage systems. This theory was bolstered by local knowledge in Panama of “yellow fever winds” that blew from lowlands east of Panama City and brought periodic outbreaks of the disease. Also clear to the Victorian mind–the lazy, lascivious, or morally wanting were much more susceptible. Bourbon and mustard seed, combined with a God-fearing, industrious lifestyle, were the only remedies.
In modern times a vaccine and programs to reduce breeding of the Aedes aegypti mosquito provide effective prevention. Those today who resist immunization or who shun mosquito netting need only think back to this day when American Navy lost one of our greatest heroes to a (now) preventable disease.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 30 AUG 22
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, pp. 103-04.
McCullough, David. The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1870-1914. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977, pp. 33-38, 137-47.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Yellow fever is not indigenous to the New World. The Aedes aegypti mosquito, the vector for the disease, was brought from Africa in the bilges of slave ships during the early period of European colonization. The same mosquito also carries dengue fever. Since its introduction Aedes aegypti has become endemic to our Gulf Coast states and as far north as Washington, DC. In this nation the mosquito is recently being out competed by an aggressive sister species, Aedes albopictus, which is also a vector for yellow fever and dengue. Yellow fever deaths in the United States are rare, although the WHO estimates annual deaths worldwide to be 30,000–90% in Africa where the viral genotype is most virulent.