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Bacteria And Politics: The Application Of Science To The Yellow Fever Crisis In Reconstruction New Orleans, Polly M. Rolman-Smith

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of germ theory during the nineteenth century transformed Western medicine. By the 1870s, public health officials in the American South used germ theory to promote sanitation efforts to control public health crises, such as yellow fever epidemics. Before the discovery of mosquito transmission of yellow fever, physicians of the late nineteenth century believed the disease was spread by a highly contagious germ. Prominent medical practitioners of New Orleans, such as Confederate Army veteran Dr. Joseph Jones, used available scientific knowledge and investigation to attempt to control yellow fever during the Reconstruction period, a period rife with political and …