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Yellow fever

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*[[1873]]
*[[1874]]
The 1874 epidemic killed 354 of Pensacola's 1400 residents. In the belief that the disease was transmitted by day, victims were buried in the cemetery at night by the light of lanterns.<ref>[Zemenick, D.J. http://barrierislandgirl.blogspot.com/2006/10/st-michaels-cemetery-history-of.html Zemenick, D.J. "St. Michael's Cemetery - History of Pensacola"]</ref>
Commodore Melanchton B. Woolsey, commandant of the Navy Yard, correctly believed that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes, some years before this was demonstrated scientifically. "He erroneously believed, as others did also, that disease carrying mosquitoes could only fly a few feet high. So Woolsey moved into the third-story cupola. He got his meals, rum (which he claimed was a 'tonic' against the fever) and tobacco for his pipe by lowering a basket on a rope from one of the cupola's windows. One day his servant forgot the rum! Woolsey died soon thereafter."<ref>[http://benefits.military.com/misc/installations/Base_Content.jsp?id=1080 "Military.com Installation Guide"]</ref> Shortly before the epidemic began, Woolsey had received orders to transfer to a northern post, but he had chosen to remain on duty in Pensacola.<ref>[http://famousamericans.net/melanchtontaylorwoolsey/ "Virtual American Biographies"]</ref>.
*[[1882]]
On September 30, 1882, before the epidemic had concluded, the New York Times reported reported 783 cases of yellow fever in Pensacola, including 78 deaths.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9401E2DF1F3EE433A25752C0A9669D94639FD7CF "The Yellow Fever Scourge; Rapid Spread of the Disease in Pensacola and Need of Aid" ] The New York Times, September 30, 1882]</ref> The New York Times also reported that "the state of Alabama has quarantined against Pensacola. Unless some arrangement can be made to avert the disaster, all trains will be withdrawn, and the city will be cut off from mails and supplies."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E07E6DA1E3EE433A25751C0A96F9C94639FD7CF "Yellow Fever's Victims; A Scourge in the South -- A Quarantine Against Pensacola" ] The New York Times, September 2, 1882]</ref>
In a contemporaneous account of the 1882 epidemic, R.B.S. Hargis, a physician who treated numerous yellow fever cases in Pensacola, reported that at the Pensacola Navy yard and in the adjacent villages of Warrington and Woolsey, with a total population of between 1300 and 1400, there were 167 cases of yellow fever and 33 deaths.
Dr. Hargis had a vague idea that something in the air expedited the transmission of the disease, but did not state that that mosquitoes were involved: "Certain unknown conditions of the atmosphere obtain at times, which favor the reproduction and dissemination of the <i>morbific principle</i>, and when this occurs, no means of disinfection or of staying its progress known to sanitarians are adequate to destroy it, or even mitigate or lessen its potency."
Dr. Hargis reported "exceedingly stringent precautions around our city to prevent refugees communicating the disease."<ref>Hargis, R.B.S. [http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2272478 Hargis, R.B.S. "The Pensacola Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1882"]</ref>
*[[1888]]
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