History of yellow fever History of yellow fever The evolutionary origins of yellow fever most likely lie in Africa. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that the virus originated from East or Central Africa, with transmission between primates and humans, and spread from there to West Africa. The virus as well as the vector "Aedes aegypti", a mosquito species, were probably brought to the western hemisphere and the Americas by slave trade ships from Africa after the first European exploration in 1492. The first outbreaks of disease that were probably yellow fever occurred in the Windward Islands of the Caribbean on Barbados in 1647 and Guadalupe in
History of yellow fever word of an epidemic would cause a quarantine to be placed on the city, and their trade would suffer. In such epidemics, steamboats frequently carried passengers and the disease upriver from New Orleans to other cities along the Mississippi River. The epidemic was dramatized and featured in the plot of the 1938 film "Jezebel", starring Bette Davis. Yellow fever was a threat in New Orleans and south Louisiana virtually every year, during the warmest months. Among the more prominent victims were: Spanish colonial Governor Manuel Gayoso de Lemos (1799); the first and second wives (d. 1804, 1809) of territorial Governor