1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic Philadelphia forced evacuation of certain neighborhoods and placed refugees in supervised camps. After the epidemic, the city inspected all houses and destroyed those it deemed unhealthy. American doctors did not identify the vector of yellow fever until the late nineteenth century. In 1881 Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor, argued that mosquito bites caused yellow fever; he credited Rush's published account of the 1793 epidemic for giving him the idea. He said that Rush had written: "Mosquitoes (the usual attendants of a sickly autumn) were uncommonly numerous..." In the late 1880s, Finlay's theories were confirmed in Cuba by experiments of the
Yellow Fever Commission "Yellow Jack", a 1938 movie presenting the same narrative. Yellow Fever Commission The Yellow Fever Commission was a research team of the United States Army which researched treatment for yellow fever. The research process itself became a focus of study for later generations. A United States nurse named Clara Maass and two Spanish immigrants were among those who died as a result of their research participation. Researchers mark the research of the Yellow Fever Commission as the origin of the model of modern consent in medical research. The 1934 play "Yellow Jack" told the story of Walter Reed in the