SANITISE AND CONTROL

Yellow fever became a ruse for US intervention in Cuba

- PRANAY LAL

YELLOW FEVER is a dreaded disease in the Americas and Africa. It was an even more feared malady in the 19th and early 20th century when cures were not readily available. In 1878, some passengers from a ship that left Havana, Cuba, carried the fever and spread it in New Orleans, the US, after escaping quarantine.

The fever spread throughout the Mississippi Valley and as far as St Louis; 20,000 people died and the cotton industry lost about US $200 million. Bacteriology was a nascent discipline then and virology (yellow fever is caused by a virus) nonexistent. As US commercial relations with Cuba were expanding, anxiety about the fever mounted. Unsanitary conditions in shanties in US cities, particularly in towns bordering Mexico, were a constant worry for health officials.