CHAPTER I 
THE YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC IN BELIZE, 1905. 
Previous Epidemics of Yellow Fever in Belize and 
THE CAUSES TO WHICH THEY WERE ASCRIBED. 
TEARING into consideration the position of Belize in the Yellow Fever 
J- Zone and its proximity to Mexico on the one side and Guatemala, 
Honduras and Panama on the other, neither the numbers nor the severity 
of the outbreaks appear very great. On the other hand, the numerical strength 
of the Colony is small and there was never much opportunity for the collection 
of a large non-immune population ; indeed, it is reasonable to suppose that the 
population largely consisted of immunes. But the mortality, as one would 
also expect, amongst the few newly-arrived Europeans, appears to have been 
comparatively very great. The cases have not been limited to any particular 
season, they have often been distributed uniformly throughout the year, and 
the longest interval between any two cases has been recorded as 45 days. 
As one might infer from the smallness of the town, the disease has occurred 
in a scattered form ; there does not appear from the evidence available to have 
been any one special quarter in which it arose and from whence it spread to 
other parts. 
Looking back upon the views which have been held from time to time to 
account for these epidemics is perhaps the most useful part of any enquiry 
into the past history of Yellow fever, for it enables one to appreciate the 
difficulties which are met with to day in displacing the older ideas, however 
irrational they may be, and in substituting the modern views. Such a study 
also shows the severe injury which was done to material and to commerce, 
and the needless expense which resulted from these theories at times when the 
community was least able to bear them. 
Yellow fever has been attributed to droughts and to floods, to the 
“ pestilential mangrove swamp,” to high temperatures, to foecal matters, to 
combinations of atmospheric circumstances, to stone ballast, hundreds of tons of 
which have been disinfected or thrown into the sea, to excavations and 
dredgings. These theories have raised bitter controversies, and they have 
been the cause during epidemics of the loss of much valuable time. Even 
to-day there exists in many parts a very deep-rooted prejudice against excava- 
tions and dredgings during certain seasons, notably in the summer months, 
