18 LOSS- THROUGH INSECTS THAT CARRY DISEASE. 



outbreaks in Philadelphia, Charleston, and Boston as early as 1692, 

 and for a hundred years there were, occasional outbreaks, culminat- 

 ing in the great Philadelphia epidemic of 1793. Northern cities were 

 able, by rigid quarantine measures, to prevent great epidemics after 

 the early jDart of the nineteenth century, but from the West Indies 

 the disease was occasionally introduced and jjrevailed from time to 

 time epidemically in the Southern States. In 1853 it raged through- 

 out this region. New Orleans alone having a mortality of 8,000. The 

 last widespread epidemic occurred in 1878, chiefly in Louisiana, Ala- 

 bama, and Mississippi, but spreading up the Mississippi Valley as far 

 as Cairo, 111., and attacking with virulence the city of Memphis, Tenn. 

 In this year there were 125,000 cases and 12,000 deaths. ^ In 1882 

 there were 192 deaths at Pensacola ; in 1887, G2 deaths in the Southern 

 States; in 1893, 52 deaths; in 1897, 484; in 1898, 2,456 cases with 

 117 deaths; in 1903, 139 deaths were recorded, mostly at Laredo, 

 Tex., and in 1905 there was a serious outbreak at New Orleans and 

 in neighboring towns, including one localit}' in Mississippi, in which 

 911 deaths were recorded for the whole country. 



The actual loss of life from yellow fever during all these years, 

 when compared with the loss from other diseases, lias been compara- 

 tively slight, but the death rate is perhaps the most insignificant fea- 

 ture of the devastation which j^ellow fever epidemics have produced, 

 and the disease itself has been but a small part of the affliction which 

 it has brought to the Southern States. The disease once discovered in 

 epidemic form, the whole country has become alarmed; commerce 

 in the affected region has come virtually to a standstill; cities have 

 been practically deserted ; people have died from exposure in camping 

 out in the highlands ; rigid quarantines have been established ; inno- 

 cent persons have been shot while trying to pass these quarantine 

 lines; all industry for the time has ceased. The commerce of the 

 South during the epidemic of 1878, for example, fell off 90 per cent, 

 and the hardships of the population can not be estimated in monetary 

 terms. With such industrial and commercial conditions existing 

 from Texas to South Carolina, many industries at the North have 

 suffered, and, in fact, the effect of a yellow fever summer in the South 

 has been felt not only all over the United States, but in many other 

 portions of the world. 



All these conditions, as bad as they have been, do not sura up the 

 total loss to the national prosperity during past years. Cities like 

 Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, Memphis, Jacksonville, and Charles- 

 ton, subject to occasional epidemics, as they have been in the past, 

 have not prospered as they should have done. Their progress has 

 been greatly impeded by this one cause, and thus the industrial 

 develojDment of the entire South has been greatly retarded. 



