The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our Nation (35 page)

I found the quote from Rutherford B. Hayes’s personal letter calling the Memphis epidemic “greatly exaggerated” in the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center on-line collection of the president’s letters and diaries. The dates when the mayor of Memphis and other officials wired the president were found in local papers.

Nearly all information pertaining to Sister Constance and the nuns at St. Mary’s was taken from a series of notes and letters found among Constance’s personal items after her death—they were collected and printed, though not published, as
The Sisters of St. Mary at Memphis: With the Acts and Sufferings of the Priests and Others Who Were There with Them during the Yellow Fever Season of 1878.
St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis houses that book.

Descriptions of St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral and information about it were based on visits there and an interview with Elizabeth Wirls. I also read the bound, printed history of St. Mary’s, available at the church. While St. Mary’s still has the original altar belonging to the nuns, the stole worn by Charles Parsons and the stained-glass rose window—that is almost all that remains of the original cathedral, which burned down several years after the epidemic. During a stay in Kansas City, however, I visited the St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, which was built in the likeness of the Memphis church. It even has stained-glass windows commemorating the Martyrs of Memphis. It was there that I was able to get a sense of the dark-wood interior and Victorian, gothic architecture of the Memphis cathedral as it was when the nuns served there.

Some details, like the yellow cardboard hanging from doors, “bring out your dead” and the burning of infected clothing appeared in a 1932
Press-Scimitar
clipping held in the Yellow Fever Collection at the Memphis Library.

I based my descriptions of Victorian mourning on the books
Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life
and
Elmwood: In the Shadows of the Elms.

“A stranger in Memphis might have believed he was in hell” appeared in an article, “City Still Bears Scars of Epidemic Century Ago,” in the
Commercial Appeal,
June 18, 1978. The article was found in the Yellow Fever Collection. Also from that article came the statistic about one railroad ticket agent who sold $35,000 worth of train tickets in three days.

Descriptions of Elmwood Cemetery during the epidemic came from
Elmwood, History of the Cemetery,
written in 1874, and available at the Elmwood offices. I also visited the cemetery to read through its ledger book for 1878.

I found a reference to letters with holes punched through and fumigated with a studded paddle in a 1938
Commercial Appeal
clipping in the Yellow Fever Collection of the Memphis Library.

All information about Armstrong came from his original letters held in the William Armstrong papers in the Yellow Fever Collection and from an article in the
West Tennessee Historical Papers,
1950. Additional information about him was found in the papers belonging to Constance and the nuns at St. Mary’s, as well as the William Armstrong file held at Elmwood Cemetery.

To recreate scenes involving Constance, Parsons and Armstrong, I relied on their personal letters, already cited, and accounts of the nuns. Though Constance and Parsons often met, as did Constance and Armstrong, I could only find only one case where all three were together—the one included in this book— when Dean Harris fell ill.

Information about doctors during the epidemic as well as general information about Victorian medicine came from a variety of sources: the Breusch Papers, LaPointe’s
From Saddlebags to Science,
Dromgoogle’s
Yellow Fever Heroes, Honors, and Horrors of 1878,
Keating’s
The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878,
Paul Starr’s
The Social Transformation of American Medicine,
T. O. Summers’s
Yellow Fever
and Goodman and Gillman’s
The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics.
I also based some of the details like spring-loaded lancets or leaden glass bottles on visits to the Memphis history exhibit at the Pink Palace.

Descriptions of the day-to-day work of the Howard physicians were taken from Breusch’s article in the
Journal of the Tennessee Medical Association.
Details about Mitchell’s specific treatment for fever cases was found in Dromgoogle’s account. The bizarre treatment for yellow fever involving sitting on a chair and passing out was taken from Dr. S. S. Fitch’s
The Family Physician,
1876.

The quote from the 1878
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
about surgeons serving in war versus the yellow fever epidemic was found in the Breusch papers.

“Only one change was noticeable—the decrease of their numbers” is from Keating’s
The History of Yellow Fever.

All information pertaining to Charles C. Parsons was taken from the Parsons file, George C. Harris papers and papers belonging to the Sisterhood at St. Mary’s—all are held in the Yellow Fever Collection at the Memphis Library.

“A man on Poplar . . . cowardly deserted his wife and little daughter, both of whom were ill with the fever; if he isn’t dead, somebody ought to kill him” appeared in the September 6, 1878,
Appeal.

The account of Louis Schuyler was taken from the papers belonging to the Sisterhood of St. Mary’s, as well as the George C. Harris papers. A fictional description of his death is also available in Charles Turner’s
The Celebrant.
It was never confirmed, nor denied, that Louis Schuyler was moved into the death alley still alive. After his death, letters from concerned friends and family were sent to Dean George C. Harris. Those letters, as well as his explanation, are part of the Yellow Fever Collection.

The description of the illness and deaths of Constance and Thecla were taken from the papers belonging to the Sisterhood of St. Mary’s. A few of the details were also found in the William J. Armstrong papers. The obituary quote, “Of them it may be said they were lovely in their lives, and in their death they were not divided,” was found in the scrapbook of George C. Harris.

The account of Dr. William J. Armstrong’s final days and death were taken from his personal correspondence and the article about his life and letters in the
West Tennessee Historical Papers,
1950.

The final list of those who perished in the epidemic was taken from several sources, including Keating’s book, Breusch’s papers, the
Elmwood
book, the Charles G. Fisher papers, and
Memphis 1800-1900, Volume III: Years of Courage.

Descriptions of the citizen’s meeting at the Greenlaw on Thanksgiving Day was taken from newspaper accounts.

I found that the
Emily B. Souder
sank in December of 1878 in the shipping news of the
New York Times.

Statistics from the 1878 epidemic came from three sources: Bloom’s
The Mississippi Valley’s Great Yellow Fever Epidemic,
Carrigan’s
The Saffron Scourge
and the
Conclusions of the Board of Experts, 1879.

Information about the state of the country following the epidemic and the battle over the National Board of Health came from John Ellis’s
Yellow Fever and Public Health in the New South
and Margaret Humphreys’s
Yellow Fever and the South.
The quote about the president not wanting to commit the recessed congress to an investigation was taken from Ellis’s book, as was the quote from
Harper’s.

Statistics about financial aid and provisions sent to Memphis appeared in Keating’s book.

My account of the Board of Experts was taken from the
Proceedings of the Board of Experts
and the
Conclusions of the Board of Experts, 1878.
Both are held in the Rare Books Collection of the Library of Congress. Statistics for the number of blacks and whites who died were taken from those reports, as well as Keating’s book.

The peculiar incidence of the fever among white children in New Orleans was taken from Carrigan’s book.

Biographical information about Juan Carlos Finlay was taken primarily from an article, “Carlos Finlay’s Life and the Death of Yellow Jack,” published in the
Bulletin of the Pan American Health Organization
(1989).

Biographical information about George M. Sternberg came from the George Miller Sternberg papers at the National Library of Medicine, John Pierce and Jim Writer’s
Yellow Jack,
Martha Sternberg’s
George Miller Sternberg: A Biography
and “The Trials and Tribulations of George Miller Sternberg—America’s First Bacteriologist,” published in
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.

Historians agree that 5,150 people died during the Memphis 1878 epidemic. That number comes from Keating’s book written only one year after the epidemic. The number represents roughly one-tenth of the total population of Memphis, which was estimated to be just under 50,000 in 1878.

The evolution of Memphis from a cosmopolitan, diverse, progressive city to one in which Protestant fundamentalism and white supremacy flourished is taken from Memphis historian Gerald M. Capers in his book
The Biography of a River Town.
The quote suggesting that Atlanta owes its present position to the work of the
Aedes aegypti
in Memphis is from the same source.

The statistic taken from the National Bureau of Education census is also from Capers book: “The extent to which newcomers took the places of former residents in the years following 1880 is revealed in a census taken in 1918 by the National Bureau of Education. Of the 11,781 white parents residing in Memphis forty years after the great epidemic, only 183, less than 2 per cent, had been born there.”

Information about George Waring and the account of his death came from William W. Sorrels’s
Memphis’ Greatest Debate; a Question of Water,
as well as his
New York Times
obituary on October 30, 1898, the
Commercial Appeal
obituary, the Memphis
Avalanche
obituary and Waring’s own report,
The Memphis Sewerage System.

The introductory quote for Part III is part of a letter written by Walter Reed to his wife, Emilie, on December 31, 1900.

The description of the sinking of the USS
Maine
was taken from Captain Sigsbee’s own book,
The Maine,
written in 1899, and held in the Rare Book Collection of the Library of Congress. I also relied on G.J.A. O’Toole’s
The Spanish War: An American Epic 1898,
an excellent book on the war. There is information from Hugh Thomas’s
Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom
and Pierce and Writer’s
Yellow Jack
as well.

The four presidents who attempted to purchase Cuba at one time or another were James Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and William McKinley. The quote from Thomas Jefferson was taken from
Yellow Jack.
Robert Desowitz’s quote appeared in his book
Who Gave Pinta to the Santa Maria?

I based the majority of the “Siboney” chapter on Victor Clarence Vaughn’s autobiography,
A Doctor’s Memories.

Additional information, including the Round Robin letter controversy, was taken from O’Toole’s
The Spanish War.
Shafter’s quote was also taken from that source. It has been disputed whether or not the Round Robin letter was Shafter’s idea or Roosevelt’s.
The Spanish War
uses Roosevelt’s own autobiography as the source for the account in which Shafter came up with the plan and wrangled Roosevelt into it; but, in a footnote, O’Toole adds that Roosevelt had written a letter to a friend four days before the meeting with Shafter in which he enclosed a draft of the Round Robin letter.

Biographical information about George M. Sternberg came from the George Miller Sternberg papers at the National Library of Medicine, The Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Collection, John Pierce and Jim Writer’s
Yellow Jack,
Martha Sternberg’s
George Miller Sternberg: A Biography
and “The Trials and Tribulations of George Miller Sternberg—America’s First Bacteriologist,” published in
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.
The editorial from the
New York Times
calling Sternberg unfit for the position of surgeon general appeared in “The Trials and Tribulations of George Miller Sternberg—America’s First Bacteriologist.”

The majority of Reed’s biographical information came from Dr. William Bean’s excellent biography
Walter Reed,
published in 1982. It is a well written and thorough account of Reed’s work in Cuba. Additional information was taken from Howard A. Kelly’s
Walter
Reed and Yellow Fever,
1906; Laura Wood Roper’s
Walter Reed: Doctor in Uniform,
1943; and Pierce and Writer’s
Yellow Jack,
2005. Several personal details and excerpts from letters were taken from the Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Collection, which houses a wealth of personal correspondence between Reed and Emilie, as well as other family members, and from the Walter Reed Papers at the National Library of Medicine.

Information about Dr. Luke P. Blackburn was taken from Jane Singer’s “The Fiend in Gray,” published in the
Washington Post.
Some information regarding Blackburn was also found in Quinn’s 1887 book
Heroes and Heroines of Memphis or Reminiscences of the Yellow Fever Epidemics.

Historical information about Johns Hopkins University was taken from three sources: John M. Barry’s
The Great Influenza,
Roper’s
Walter Reed: Doctor in Uniform
and Kelly’s
Walter Reed and Yellow Fever.
Kelly, one of the Great Four, worked with Reed at Hopkins.

For the account of the Typhoid Board’s work, I relied on Victor Vaughan’s
A Doctor’s Memories.
Information about Vaughan’s medical advancements after the Typhoid Board and his quote at the end of the chapter were taken from Barry’s
The Great Influenza.