EARLY HISTORY OF YELLOW FEVER 295 
“Ships, particularly the ships loaded with sugar, have transported this 
terrible malady to Africa where we find it in the Canaries after 1701 and perhaps 
even after 1510. Besides the Canaries it touched Madeira, the Cape Verde 
Islands, Senegal, Gambia, the Bisoagos, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, the Gold 
Coast, Benin, Fernando Po, the mouth of the Congo and Angola with Saint 
Paul de Loanda. It has caused several epidemics in the island of Ascension 
and from this it was carried to St. Helena but without attacking the population 
of theisland. At this day it persists as an endemic center in the Sudanese region 
comprised between the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, the upper Senegal and the 
upper Niger.” , 
After carefully considering the question of the original home of yellow fever, 
Sir Rubert Boyce concluded that the disease, and therefore the mosquito, is 
indigenous to America. His brief summary of the early history is given. 
“There is every reason for supposing that yellow fever is one of the very old 
diseases of mankind in the New World. It is stated that it was known to the 
Aztecs under the name of matlazahualt, and according to Humboldt it existed 
as early as the eleventh century. 
“ Amongst old Spanish writers who refer to this disease may be mentioned 
Oviedo, who in his ‘ Historia General de las Indias’ describes the great mor- 
tality among the followers of Columbus in 1494. This mortality he attributes 
to the humidity of St. Domingo, but in every probability it was yellow fever. So 
bad were the reports which reached Spain, that Ferdinand V. had to send out 
300 convicts to the island as there were no volunteers. 
* Columbus in 1498, in writing to the King of Spain upon the sickness of his 
men, attributed their illness to ‘ peculiarities in the air and water’ in the new 
land. No doubt the peculiarity was the mosquito. 
“Jn the sixteenth century yellow fever is said to have decimated the Mexi- 
cans. But the first authentic history of an epidemic of yellow fever was fur- 
nished by Jean Ferreyra de Rosa at Olinda * in Brazil in the year 1687. 
“ Pére Dutertre, 1635, appears to have been the first to furnish details of the 
symptoms and progress of the disease in the West Indies. He regarded it as a 
new disease. 
“ Pére Labat, whose name is well known in connection with yellow fever, 
found on landing in Martinique in the year 1649, the disease raging in the 
island, the monks of the religious order stationed there being severely afflicted. 
The learned father stated that the disease was called ‘the Maladie de Siam,’ be- 
cause in Martinique they supposed that it was imported from Siam by the ship 
Oriflamme. As, however, this ship called at Brazilian ports on the voyage, it is 
much more probable that either the crew became infected there or that infected 
mosquitoes were carried away. According to Bancroft the disease existed in St. 
Domingo in 1731. ‘Old writers upon yellow fever frequently refer to the West 
Coast of Africa as being the original source of the disease. 
“ Thus Dr. Chisholm believed that yellow fever was first introduced into the 
West Indies in 1793, when Grenada became infected from the remarkable ship 
Hankey, which had come from Bulam in West Africa. On account of this sup- 
posed origin of yellow fever it is sometimes called Bulam fever. Evidence, how- 
ever, points the other way,—that in fact it was a very prevalent disease in the 
New World, stretching from Mexico down through Central America to Brazil. 
Brazil appears, then, to have been the centre from which it radiated out to the 
West Indies. As I have stated before, the early Conquistadores suffered from it, 
the Latin races of the Old World being therefore the first to make its acquaint- 
* Now a suburb of Pernambuco.— Editors. 
