Yellow Fever in New Orleans

The devastation of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 ranks as the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States. New Orleans alone suffered more than 1,500 casualties. Bad as it was, the single biggest killer of citizens of New Orleans was not Katrina.

Some called New Orleans, founded in 1718 by John Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, a “damp grave.” Each spring brought flooding to the city, along with rats, mosquitoes and snakes. The mosquitoes and rats, in turn brought cholera and yellow fever. These two diseases, along with many other tropical fevers, killed far more than 1,500 citizens of New Orleans that died because of Hurricane Katrina.

How many you say? Perhaps as many as 41,000 people died of yellow fever from 1817 to 1905. Many more likely died before 1817, but accurate records only began that particular year.

During the spring rains, as many as one-third of the population of New Orleans would evacuate the city leaving those that remained to face the wrath of the killer known as “Bronze John,” the “Saffron Scourge,” and “Yellowjack.” From 1851 to 1855 along, 7,000 to 12,000 citizens succumbed to the disease, fully 10% of the population.

Families buried bodies in mass graves and the profession of corpse carriers formed to meet the daily need. They would pull their carts down the streets, collecting bodies and announcing, “Bring out your dead,” to the people in their houses.

Yes, the people of New Orleans are a hardy bunch. Hurricane Katrina was devastating, but the City survived – just as they have survived the hostile environment surrounding them for almost three-hundred years.

Fiction South