1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic while rejecting his etiology of the disease. Others deprecated his therapies, such as Dr. Deveze, but agreed that the fever had local origins. Deveze had arrived on the refugee ship from Saint-Domingue which many accused of having carried the disease, but he thought it healthy. The doctors did not understand the origin or transmittal of the disease. Historians believe it was brought by refugees from Saint-Domingue, where it was endemic, and transmitted by mosquitoes between the infected and healthy persons. Dr. Kuhn advised drinking wine, "at first weaker wines, such as claret and Rhenish; if these cannot be had, Lisbon
History of yellow fever The entire Mississippi River Valley from St. Louis south was affected, and tens of thousands fled the stricken cities of New Orleans, Vicksburg, and Memphis. An estimated 120,000 cases of yellow fever resulted in some 20,000 deaths. Memphis suffered several epidemics during the 1870s, culminating in the 1878 epidemic (called the Saffron Scourge of 1878), with more than 5,000 fatalities in the city. Some contemporary accounts said that commercial interests had prevented the rapid reporting of the outbreak of the epidemic, increasing the total number of deaths. People still did not understand how the disease developed or was transmitted, and