- Combatting Yellow Fever in Galveston, 1839–1905
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Yellow fever took countless lives across Africa and the Americas during the three centuries prior to 1900. Beginning in early summer and ending in late fall, “Yellow Jack,” as the disease was known, hit fast with horrible results. It began with fever, chills, and muscle aches; next came liver failure and jaundice (yellow skin). In the last stages, victims suffered hemorrhaging from the gums, nose, and stomach lining—the terrifying “black vomit.” Some victims mysteriously recovered, but a large percentage died. In short, yellow fever was a dreaded scourge with no known cause and no known cure.1
Yellow fever came to Texas in epidemic proportions for the first time in 1839 at Galveston, and it would plague the city intermittently for the rest of the century.2 The city’s residents responded with what might be called a war on yellow fever that finally ended with victory in 1905. The story of this war deserves telling in detail because it had a lasting effect on sanitation and medical services in Galveston. Also, it illustrates how the fear of diseases with unknown causes and uncertain cures can create near panic and lead to extreme actions in the name of prevention, even without any evidence that such actions bear any relationship to the disease. [End Page 235]
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Ashbel Smith, who arrived in Houston in 1837 with a medical degree from Yale University, wrote a history of the fever’s first attack at Galveston that began with a detailed description of the situation of the island: “The City of Galveston is scarcely two years old and is estimated to contain from 2,000 to 2,500 souls . . . is but little elevated above the surrounding water, quite level, destitute of trees, and presents altogether the general appearance of a prairie.” Furthermore, “The heaving of the tide has formed a natural levee along the shore of the harbor [on the bay] . . . immediately in the rear of this levee, the land is low . . . and overflowed at high tides.” Behind the tidal area, the land was higher, but the overflow was three-fourths of a mile long and 100 to 300 feet wide. Sitting slightly offshore on the bay side there were usually twenty-five to fifty vessels at anchor; and just next to the low area ran Strand Street, the business center of town. “Nearly all the stores and buildings on one side of the Strand, are erected in or over the morass, without its having been filled up at all, or but very inadequately. In addition to the mud and moisture suffered to remain beneath, and in the rear of these buildings, the filth which business and population engender, has been permitted to accumulate.”3 The remainder of the town, he said, sat on dry ground and had a neat, comfortable, and clean aspect and up to that time had been almost totally free from serious diseases. When the fever hit in 1839, Smith treated the sick as best he could and wrote the first treatise in Texas about yellow fever. In it he noted, “The patient needs constant attendance. It is indispensable. The disease requires little medication.” From his observations, he was convinced that the fever was not contagious.4 Later events were to prove him right as the simple remedies of bed rest, herbal tea, and good nutrition seemed to work best.
There was no official cemetery, and according to historian Ben Stuart, victims of the 1839 yellow fever epidemic were interred “near a range of sand hills in close proximity to the Gulf shore just east of 18th Street.” Those who died were quickly hauled away to the burial ground on the east end of the island in the dunes...