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
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