Yellow fever James Carroll, Aristides Agramonte, and Jesse William Lazear. They successfully proved Finlay's ″mosquito hypothesis″. Yellow fever was the first virus shown to be transmitted by mosquitoes. The physician William Gorgas applied these insights and eradicated yellow fever from Havana. He also campaigned against yellow fever during the construction of the Panama Canal. A previous effort of canal building by the French had failed (in part due to mortality from the high incidence of yellow fever and malaria, which killed many workers). Although Dr. Walter Reed has received much of the credit in United States history books for "beating" yellow fever,
Yellow fever the Louisiana Purchase to the US in 1803. In 1804, Haiti proclaimed its independence as the second republic in the Western Hemisphere. The yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia, which was then the capital of the United States, resulted in the deaths of several thousand people, more than 9% of the population. The national government fled the city, including President George Washington. Additional yellow fever epidemics struck Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York City in the 18th and 19th centuries, and traveled along steamboat routes from New Orleans. They caused some 100,000–150,000 deaths in total. In 1853, Cloutierville, Louisiana, had