"The public health movement in the South began in the wake of a yellow fever epidemic that devastated the lower Mississippi Valley in 1878--a disaster that caused 20,000 deaths and financial losses of nearly $200 million... 

"At the national level, southern congressional leaders fought to establish a strong federal health agency, but they were defeated by the young American Public Health Association, which defended states' rights. Local responses and results were mixed. In New Orleans, business and professional men, reacting to the denunciation of the city as the nation's pesthole, organized in 1879 to improve drainage, garbage disposal, and water supplies through voluntary subscription. Their achievements were of necessity modest.

"In Memphis--the city hardest hit by the epidemic--a new municipal government in 1879 helped form the first regional health organization and during the 1880s led the nation in sanitary improvements. In Atlanta, though it largely escaped the epidemic, the Constitution and some citizens called for health reform. Ironically their voices were drowned out by ritual invocation of local health mythology and by unabashed exploitation of the stigma of pestilence attached to New Orleans and Memphis. By 1890 Atlanta rivaled Charleston and Richmond for primacy in black mortality rates" (publisher)

Nott advanced the theory that yellow fever was caused by minute animalcula. Reproduced in part in R. H. Major, Classic descriptions of disease, 3rd ed., 1945, p. 122.

Intracerebral protection test.

First vaccine for immunization against yellow fever. Hindle devised a method for the transportation of frozen infected material from West Africa to London, making it possible to carry on experimental work in Britain.

Haemagogus sp. shown to be vectors of yellow fever. With L. Whitman and M. Frania.

The most important 19th century American monograph on yellow fever. La Roche’s work sketched the disease in its appearances from 1699 to 1854 at Philadelphia, which saw some of the worst yellow fever epidemics, and provided an excellent bibliography along with discussion of the pathology, aetiology and therapeutics of the disease. Digital facsimile from the National Library of Medicine, Internet Archive, at this link.

A convenient compilation of the work of Reed and his associates, including the work of James Carroll published after the death of Walter Reed. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

This 6,000-word short story by is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating and critiquing 19th century attitudes toward women's health, both physical and mental. Digital facsimile from the U. S. National Library of Medicine at this link.

Through this book Bowditch established the stethoscope as a diagnostic tool in America. Digital facsimile from the Medical Heritage Library, Internet Archive, at this link.