Yellow fever by their newly discovered canals, which were perhaps made to absorb carbon and prevent the disease. In 1848, Josiah C. Nott suggested that yellow fever was spread by insects such as moths or mosquitoes, basing his ideas on the pattern of transmission of the disease. Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor and scientist, proposed in 1881 that yellow fever might be transmitted by mosquitoes rather than direct human contact. Since the losses from yellow fever in the Spanish–American War in the 1890s were extremely high, Army doctors began research experiments with a team led by Walter Reed, and composed of doctors
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