Yellow fever In 1873, Shreveport, Louisiana lost 759 citizens in an 80-day period to a Yellow fever epidemic, with over 400 additional victims eventually succumbing. The total death toll from August through November was approximately 1,200, In 1878, about 20,000 people died in a widespread epidemic in the Mississippi River Valley. That year, Memphis had an unusually large amount of rain, which led to an increase in the mosquito population. The result was a huge epidemic of yellow fever. The steamship "John D. Porter" took people fleeing Memphis northward in hopes of escaping the disease, but passengers were not allowed to disembark
Yellow fever probably transferred to North and South America with the importation of slaves from Africa, part of the Columbian Exchange following European exploration and colonization. The first definitive outbreak of yellow fever in the New World was in 1647 on the island of Barbados. An outbreak was recorded by Spanish colonists in 1648 in the Yucatán Peninsula, where the indigenous Mayan people called the illness "xekik" ("blood vomit"). In 1685, Brazil suffered its first epidemic, in Recife. The first mention of the disease by the name "yellow fever" occurred in 1744. McNeill argues that the environmental and ecological disruption caused by