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 The eradication of yellow fever strengthened the relationship between the US and Mexico, which had not been very good in the past. The eradication of yellow fever was also a major step toward better global health. In 1927, scientists isolated the yellow fever virus in West Africa. Following this, two vaccines were developed in the 1930s. The vaccine 17D was developed by the South African microbiologist Max Theiler at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City. This vaccine was widely used by the U.S. Army during World War II. Following the work of Ernest Goodpasture, Theiler used chicken eggs to