St. Augustine and the Black Vomit

In the summer of 1821 following the transfer of East Florida to the United States, Spanish subjects who preferred living under Spanish rule were evacuating their belongs to Cuba.
Americans from further north were inundating the city. Among the vessels used to evacuate the Spanish and their goods were the schooners Florida and Alexander.

In the late summer, the two ships returned to St. Augustine.

After the Schooner Florida crossed the bar, clothing was brought ashore to be cleaned by a laundress.

Shortly thereafter, the laundress, her husband, five children, and two boarders came down with the Yellow Fever, the “Black Vomit.” Four died.

Shortly thereafter, the Schooner Alexander crossed the bar. It was more startling, the ship’s entire crew was dead. The schooner was brought in by two Spanish sailors who were passengers. The crew had died from the Black Vomit.

Soon the two Spaniards caught the malady.

The clothing and other items on board were ordered burned and the ship fumigated. With regard to one item, however, a mattress, the order was disobeyed. The mattress was thrown overboard, where it soon drifted ashore to be recovered. The finder of the mattress soon came down with the dreaded disease.

Yellow Fever causes, among other things, hemorrhaging of the stomach. The blood is then vomited up, resulting in its common name of “Black Vomit.” The disease was fatal about 80% of the time. Death occurred within three or four days from the onset of symptoms.

Soon, St. Augustine was suffering from an epidemic, primarily affecting the Americans who had recently moved to the City. It was believed that the natives had developed immunity to the disease. The only treatment for the disease was blood letting. However, it generally was not effective.

The Huguenot Cemetery just outside the City Gates was formed for Yellow Fever victims, Protestants, and others who were not permitted to be buried in consecrated grounds. With the advent of the first frost in the fall, the epidemic waned.

Following the transfer of Florida to the United States, Florida had two territorial capitals, St. Augustine and Pensacola which had served as the Spanish colonial capitals of East and West Florida respectively. In 1822, it was Pensacola’s turn to host the territorial legislative council.

A yellow fever epidemic broke out in the capital city and the council was forced to adjourn their meetings to Cantonment north of Pensacola.

The devastation caused by yellow fever is indicated by the fate of Saint Joseph, Florida. Saint Joseph had been the site of Florida’s first constitutional convention. In 1841, it had a population of 6,000. The following year, Yellow Fever appeared. In one year, the population fell to 600. The town was abandoned.

At the same time during the latter stages of the Second Seminole War, yellow fever appeared again in St. Augustine. Among those who caught the fever was the military’s post sutler, William Alexander Carter (1818-1881). Carter survived but left Florida and returned to his native Virginia. As a result of friendships made in St. Augustine, he later became post sutler for Fort Bridger, Wyoming.

Yet again in 1877, Yellow Fever swept the state. The cause was generally unknown. Thus, in August of 1888 when yet another epidemic hit Jacksonville, various bizarre preventive remedies were suggested. One popular belief was that the disease was caused by a miasma which arose out of swamps. Another was that it was an airborne disease and that the germs could be killed by concussions. St. Augustine to help control the Jacksonville epidemic sent cannon to Jacksonville to “concuss” the deadly airborne germs.

It was also believed that the disease was highly contagious. Those suffering from symptoms were immediately quarantined. One unfortunate guest at a Jacksonville hotel suspected to have the dreaded disease was removed from the hotel and sent to the City’s “pest house,” and accused of endangering the entire state.

Residents of Jacksonville started fleeing northward. The New York Times, August 11, 1888, reported from Atlanta that trains were heavily loaded from persons attempting to get away from the stricken localities. Atlanta was reported “full of refugees from Jacksonville.”

To prevent spread of the contagion the federal government set up stations in Waycross where mail from the south was fumigated.

The Surgeon General telegraphed the Presidents of the Boards of Health in Tampa and Jacksonville authorizing the burning of infected bedding and clothing. Orders were given for additional fumigation stations in Norfolk, Dupont, Georgia, Chattahoochee, and Fernandina. As the panic spread, a proposal was made by Florida Senator Wilkinson Call for the destruction of any house deem infected.

Refugees were barred from entering various cities to the north. In Charleston, passengers and fright from the steamship Seminole from Jacksonville were barred by policemen from landing. The ship sailed for New York with its Charleston passengers and freight. Persons coming from Jacksonville and places to its south were barred from entering Wilmington, North Carolina. Red Cross workers coming to Jacksonville to relieve the suffering of the inhabitants were forced to leap from their moving train when the engineer refused to stop. It was, of course, all needless.

As early as 1829, a naval surgeon with the Royal Navy, Robert McKinnal on the HMS Sybille established that the disease and clothing and effects were not directly contagious. Dr. McKinnal to prevent panic amongst the crew, on deck and in sight of the entire crew, drank a glassful of the black vomit.

As early as 1881, American trained Cuban physician Dr. Carlos Juan Finlay established that the disease was spread by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito. He was ridiculed and it was not until after the end of the Spanish-American War and the establishment of the Yellow Fever Commission that his findings were given any credence.

The Commission placed soldiers in a screened room filled with “infected” clothing, bedding, etc. and did not come down with the disease, whilst soldiers with clean clothing, bedding, etc. in a room that was not screened came down with the disease. Each of the soldiers volunteering to expose themselves to the potentially deadly disease was given a $100.00 gold coin. Two members of the Commission itself died from the disease.

During the war, itself, casualties from the disease far exceeded those from Spanish bullets. Nine hundred sixty-eight American soldiers were killed in combat. Over 5,000 died from disease.

In Cuba, American troops coming down with the disease were given the conventional treatment of quarantine. To prevent the disease from spreading, troops suffering from fever were divided into “well” and “sick” camps. Those who came down with the fever were not permitted to return to the United States but were, instead, hospitalized at Siboney.

Indeed, the situation with regard to Yellow Fever in Cuba, even before the destruction of the Spanish Fleet on 3 July 1898, was such that Gen. Miles determined that he could use none of the troops in Cuba in the subsequent Puerto Rico campaign and that entirely fresh troops from Tampa would be utilized.

The last yellow fever epidemic in Florida was in 1905. The state sanitary engineer began in 1906 a campaign for mosquito control. Dr. Finlay was vindicated. Although, Walter Reed gave credit in his writings to Dr. Finlay, it is Dr. Reed that it usually given credit for the discovery that the black vomit was spread by the mosquito. Reed received honorary degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan. Although, Dr. Finlay was nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize, it was never awarded. He is instead remembered on a Cuban postage stamp and by a statue in Panama.

Most coastal counties of Florida where yellow fever and malaria were once rampant now have mosquito control districts such as the Anastasia Mosquito Control District in St. Johns County

Pesky flies keep Asian mosquitoes in check

A Florida midge munches down Asian tiger mosquitoes more so than native ones, researchers say, maybe because the foreign larvae wiggles more in the water.


Whatever the reason, the result is fewer of the more aggressive mosquito and the nasty human diseases it harbors.

A midge larva, right, snacks on an Asian tiger mosquito larva. Researchers say this helps keep the foreign mosquito, which carries viral diseases, in check. (University of Florida

"It is positive because this invasive mosquito is much more dangerous from a public health standpoint," said Phil Lounibos, an entomologist with the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences in Vero Beach.

He and Steven Juliano, an entomologist at Illinois State University, published their findings in the journal Oecologia.

Asian tiger mosquitoes spread dengue, which causes high fever, bladder problems, headaches, eye pain, extreme dizziness and loss of appetite.

They also spread Chikungunya, another viral

disease marked by joint pain that can last weeks, months or even years.

The Asian tiger mosquito gained a stronger foothold in Florida and elsewhere in the 1980s, when the United States began importing large numbers of used tires from Asia. Its eggs and larvae traveled here in the water inside the tires.

Entomologists expected the more aggressive Asian pest to drive the native mosquito to near extinction. That probably wouldn't matter to most Floridians, but it is important to scientists and others committed to importance of biodiversity.

Nature's defense

Given the midge's merits, mosquito controllers should try to spare the fly, the researchers said, lest they lose one of their best defenses against the Asian tiger mosquito.

"What we're observing is how a native, rather obscure midge can provide a natural biocontrol," Lounibos said.

Current mosquito-spraying methods kill some order of midges, the researchers said, but the extent is unknown.

They suggest more study of how predator-prey relationships help control such pests, as a possible alternative to spraying.

"I'm not saying that spraying for the native mosquitoes or other pest control efforts aren't necessary," Juliano said in a media release. "But it's important to understand that there is a balance, and that you can't tweak one aspect of nature without affecting many others.

"We owe it to ourselves to try to understand that balance."

Star Wars technology zaps mozzies in flight

Your reporter once had to explain to a toddler why it was vital that she take malaria pills on holiday. The child nodded sagely and asked whether she was supposed to throw the pills at the mosquitoes.

There was a very boring picture to this article, so I made my own with Boba Fett preparing to shoot a large mosquito...it fits better-hope you like. ~ JimBeucher

But it turns out that perhaps the idea wasn't so daft after all - no less a person than Microsoft exec-turned Intellectual Ventures CEO Nathan Myhrvold has been supporting a rather similar plan.

"Some of our inventors were involved in the Star Wars defence planning from the 1980s," he says. "For them, the idea of using lasers to shoot mosquitos was one of those ‘it’s so crazy it just might work!’ ideas."

The Photonic Fence proptotype was appreantly constructed almost entirely from components purchased second-hand on eBay - important for third-world countries that find missile defence systems a bit out of their budget.

LEDs beam infrared light at nearby posts, hitting strips of retroreflective material and bouncing back. A camera on each fence post monitors the reflected light for shadows cast by the mozzies.

When an invading insect is detected, software identifies it by training a nonlethal laser beam on the bug and using that illumination to estimate the insect’s size and also to measure how fast its wings are beating.

The company says it's built in safeguards to make sure the system doesn’t kill the cat. It says it can not only distinguish between mosquitoes, butterflies, and bumblebees, but can even determine whether a mosquito is male or female - no, not by looking at the dangly bits, females are bigger.

The fence can zap up to 100 mosquitoes a second, says Myhrvold, which should be plenty for the most pestilent swamp.

Sex Life May Hold Key To Honeybee Survival

 (Jan. 11, 2010) — The number and diversity of male partners a queen honeybee has could help to protect her children from disease, say University of Leeds scientists, who are investigating possible causes of the widespread increase in bee deaths seen around the world.
The researchers are working on the theory that the reason some colonies are wiped out while others remain healthy could be down the genetic diversities of the hives.

Dr Bill Hughes, from the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, says: “By making sure queens mate with enough genetically variable males, we may be able to boost resistance levels and so protect our Bee populations from disease attacks like the ones we have seen hitting the US.”

One possibility is that the loss of honeybees means that the number and variety of potential mates for a queen is becoming too low to maintain genetic diversity and therefore disease resistant populations.

Says Dr Hughes: “Given the choice, queen honeybees will typically mate with up to 12 different male partners in a matter of minutes and some with over 20. The record is the giant Asian honeybee whose queens normally mate with well over 40 males - and in one case was found to have mated with over a hundred.”

The Leeds scientists will be examining the question of genetic resistance by studying honeybee reactions to a common fungus parasite called Chalkbrood, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions.

The fungus, already found in the majority of UK hives, infects and ‘eats’ larvae, giving them a chalky appearance. Individual larvae die but the parasite rarely kills the whole colony.

In 2008, US average losses of honeybee colonies were 35%, with some beekeepers losing 90% of their colonies. A contributing factor to these high levels of bee may have been a virus. However the same virus has been found in other countries yet does not seem to cause the same problems.

Dr Hughes and his team think infections by hidden parasites in genetically susceptible bees may be combining with other factors to produce a lethal ‘perfect storm’ which overwhelms their defences.

Honeybee survival is vital to the protection of our food supplies because they pollinate up to a third of the food we grow in the UK.

The project, which has received just under £500,000 in funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, is due last for three years. Collaborators include the UK Government’s National Bee Unit based near York and the University of Copenhagen.

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To a Mosquito, Matchmaking Means 'Singing' in Perfect Harmony

 (Jan. 4, 2010) — Researchers have new insight into the sex lives of the much-maligned mosquitoes that are responsible for the vast majority of malaria deaths, according to a report published online on December 31st in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.
                                                                                 A new study shows that in finding a partner of the right species type, male and female mosquitoes depend on their ability to "sing" in perfect harmony.
In finding a partner of the right species type, male and female mosquitoes depend on their ability to "sing" in perfect harmony. Those tones are produced and varied based on the frequency of their wing beats in flight.
"Everyone must be familiar with the maddening whine a mosquito makes as it hones in for a bite," said Gabriella Gibson of the University of Greenwich at Medway. "There's no doubt many of us have wondered why it makes its presence so obvious -- surely, after all of these centuries of blood-feeding, selection should have favored a more stealthy approach that would leave mosquitoes less vulnerable to the defensive attacks of its unsettled host. Our findings suggest that mosquitoes rely on the sounds they make to attract a mate of the right species, a behavior that is far more vulnerable to selection than avoiding the risk of being squashed by the rare host that is still awake at feeding time."

The Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes in fact include a considerable amount of genetic diversity, representing a complex of seven species and several chromosomal forms. And that diversity comes with real consequences for humans, explained Gibson and Ian Russell of the University of Sussex. The complexity of malaria epidemiology and control is due in part to the mosquito's remarkable genetic plasticity, enabling its adaptation to a widening range of human-influenced habitats.
The new results help to explain how those different mosquito forms manage to reproductively isolate themselves and maintain that genetic diversity, even while some, including the "M" and "S" forms found in Burkina Faso that were the subject of the current study, can be found traveling together in the very same swarms.
Gibson and Russell's team first discovered that male and female mosquitoes harmonize with each other. Gibson said that this is analogous to two partially deaf singers -- one alto and the other soprano -- who can hear low frequencies, but perhaps not their own or each other's songs. Instead, they listen to the terrible dissonance if one or the other goes a bit sharp or flat, which they can get rid of by adjusting their respective tones until the dissonance diminishes to nothing.

"They can do this even if they each sing a different note, say a 'middle C' and a 'G' four tones higher," Russell said. "By listening and subtly altering their pitch to minimize the dissonance, they achieve their goal of 'singing' in a perfect harmony that we, but not they, can hear."
The researchers have now shown that two mosquitoes don't harmonize successfully if they are of the same sex or if they are not the same type of mosquito. They might try for a while, Gibson explained, but they never find that harmony and eventually give up trying.
And that leads Gibson to another take-home of the study. "Even the most 'lowly creatures,' such as mosquitoes, have highly evolved neurosensory systems that can process relatively simple auditory inputs to produce motor outputs enabling them to distinguish between other types of mosquito that are so closely related we need to analyze their DNA to tell them apart."

The researchers include C. Pennetier, University of Sussex, U.K., University of Greenwich at Medway, Kent, U.K., B. Warren, University of Sussex, U.K.; R. Dabire, Institut de Recherche en Science de la Sante/Centre Muraz, Burkina Faso; I.J. Russell, University of Sussex, U.K.; and G. Gibson, University of Sussex, U.K., University of Greenwich at Medway, Kent, U.K.

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