Yellow Fever
June 7, 1855, the Benjamin Franklin boat pulled into the Fort Norfolk port from St. Thomas. Seaman let out a dangerous disease that would change the lives of the people of Norfolk and Portsmouth forever. The seaman asked to dock the boat there but the safety protector would not let them. The persons who died on the ship had a suspicious story to them. They said one died of a heart attack and the other one dies of natural causes. After many days of asking the safety inspector for the ships to pull into port he finally allowed them to. They let them dock their boat but specifically said do not let their waste go into the water just in case there was something on the boat. The men on the boat worked on the ship but mistakenly let the bowl go so all of the ship’s waste was let out.
Unknowingly, they let out a deadly disease called Yellow fever. With this area being surrounded by water and it being its main resource, the disease spread like wild fire. The host for this disease was a mosquito that carried the disease, Aedes aegypti. The mosquito lived in the water in every feature of the boat. Since the boat was going to New York, the city was informed about the disease and New York declared this area infected and would let the boat come to their port. The town council of the Metropolitan area banned anyone in the area from coming to the North Carolina area in fear of spreading the disease.
The epidemic got so bad that the people started to go crazy. They burned the quarantine houses and neglected all the infected people in fear of getting the disease themselves. Some of the symptoms were headaches, backaches, fever, black vomit, etc. One out of three people were dying. Coffins were scarce because people were dying so often. People started to roll the bodies up in carpets. The mortality rate got so bad, bodies were being laid out on top of each other in graves and even roads. Baltimore relief groups gave as much supplies as they could to help the sick.
Reverend George Armstrong was a doctor and a chemist who took care of any epidemic in this area. He had many jobs but kept God in everything. Most of the city fled the state to avoid the yellow fever. Rev. Armstrong and his family stayed to take care of the infected people in hope of them getting better. Unfortunately, his family was sick with this disease too. The only survivors were his two daughters and him. Years later they found that a mosquito was causing this whole epidemic. Dr. James Carroll and Dr. Jesse Lazear had the mosquitos bite them to discover this. Dr. Carroll became ill but later recovered and Dr. Lazear became ill and died. In 1930, a live virus vaccine was developed and is still used today.
This article was very interesting to me because it showed a disease that was so close by a long time ago. The roads in which my school was built on and near is where the quarantine houses and roads are. One of the deadliest epidemics was transmitted through a vector of a mosquito and nearly wiped out the whole population of the Norfolk and Portsmouth area. I am glad they have a vaccine for this disease now because I would definitely not come here if the disease was still festering in the area. After learning about this disease I definitely wear mosquito spray outside more often because you never know what lives in these waters.

Wagner, L. (2005). The Fever. The Virginia Pilot.