“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in our history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”
-Albert Camus, The Plague
Yellow fever is a virus that lives in human blood and is passed by the aedes aegypti mosquito, which thrives in tropical climates.
Historians believe that the 1878 epidemic began on the ship the Emily B. Soude, which arrived in New Orleans from the Caribbean in May.
The epidemic took off in July, with roughly 40,000 residents that represent 20% of the city population fled the city, many of whom fled via the new railroads systems constructed during the Reconstruction period after the American Civil War, which further spread the virus across the Lower Mississippi Valley
The city saw roughly 20,000 total infections during the epidemic with 5,000 resulting in deaths, and saw a loss of more than $15 million due to the disruptions in trade from the epidemic.
