Yellow fever in Buenos Aires the mosquito "Aedes aegypti", which was responsible of transmitting Yellow Fever. A witness to the epidemic of 1871, named Mardoqueo Navarro, wrote on April 13 the following description in his diary: Since 1881, thanks to Cuban physician Carlos Finlay, it was known that the transmitting agent of Yellow Fever was mosquito "Aedes aegypti". Before that discovery, doctors attributed the cause of many epidemics to what they called "miasmas" floating in the air. Yellow Fever (or "black vomit", as it was called due to bleeding that occurs in the gastrointestinal) caused an epidemic in Buenos Aires in 1852. However, by a
1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic was also advocated by Dr. Edward Stevens, who in mid-September claimed it had cured Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, of the fever. Rush searched the medical literature for other approaches. Benjamin Franklin had given him letters sent by Dr. John Mitchell, related to treating patients during a 1741 yellow fever outbreak in Virginia. (Franklin never published the letters.) Mitchell noted that the stomach and intestines filled with blood and that these organs had to be emptied at all costs. "On this account," Mitchell argued, "an ill-timed scrupulousness about the weakness of the body is of bad consequences in these