The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [134]
A Return to Africa
Character development of Adrian Stokes came primarily from Greer Williams’s The Plague Killers, written in 1969. Some additional information about Stokes, as well as some of the details about the Rockefeller compound in Yaba, were found in Charles Bryan’s A Most Satisfactory Man: The Story of Theodore Brevard Hayne, Last Martyr of Yellow Fever.
Descriptions of the Rockefeller Foundation were gathered from Williams’s book and the website for the Rockefeller Foundation. John M. Barry’s Influenza also provided some material about the historical significance of the Rockefeller Institute and Rockefeller Foundation.
The two quotes cited in this chapter were taken from Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague, written in 1994, and Paul De Kruif’s Microbe Hunters, written in 1926.
The Vaccine
Biographical information about Max Theiler and his work with the 17-D yellow fever vaccine came from Greer Williams’s books The Virus Hunters and The Plague Killers. Williams was a contemporary of Theiler and was able to interview him personally for his book.
History Repeats Itself
The majority of updated information about yellow fever was taken from the World Health Organization.
Additional information about the attempts to eradicate Aedes aegypti from the United States was found in Andrew Spielman and Michael D’Antonio’s book Mosquito. The quote about America going to war with Spain, in part, because of yellow fever was taken from their book.
Information about the Asian tiger mosquito and its discovery in Memphis came from Paul Reiter and Richard Darsie’s “Aedes Albopictus in Memphis, Tennessee (USA): An Achievement of Modern Transportation,” published in Mosquito News, 1984. Reiter was the entomologist who found the tiger mosquito in Memphis, TN. Additional details came from Gary Taubes’s “Tales of a Bloodsucker—Asian Tiger Mosquitoes,” published in Discover, July 1998.
The recent study about the proteins on the surface of the yellow fever virus was published in an article in Virology, July 5, 2005. The study of the way a flavivirus interacts with interferon during an immune response was published in the Journal of Virology, September 2005.
The quote regarding A. aegypti mosquitoes established in urban areas was taken from the article “Yellow Fever: A Decade of Re-emergence,” by S. E. Robertson, et al, the Journal of the American Medical Association, 1996.
Epilogue: Elmwood
The majority of the descriptions of Elmwood were based on several visits there to look through their historical collections and an interview with superintendent Sunny Handback just before he retired in November 2005. The reference to the terms burial and cemetery were taken from the book Elmwood: In the Shadow of Elms. I also read through Elmwood’s ledger of burials for 1878-1879.
Selected Bibliography
Archives and Collections
American Lloyd’s Register of American and Foreign Shipping 1865, “Emily B. Souder.”
Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia
The Jefferson Randolph Kean Papers
The Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection
Public Health Papers and Reports, presented at the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association, Buffalo, NY, September 16 -20, 1901
Senate Document No. 822
The Wade Hampton Frost Papers
Walter Reed Letters
The William Bennett Bean Papers
Dee J. Canale, M.D., Yellow Fever and Medical History Private Collection
Elmwood Cemetery Charles C. Parsons File Ledger for August and September 1878 burials at Elmwood William J. Armstrong, Armstrong Family File
Health Sciences Historical Collection, University of Tennessee
Library of Medicine Simon R. Bruesch Collection
Library of Congress, Rare Books Collection
Conclusions of the board of experts authorized by Congress to investigate the