TheYellowFeverEpidemics

Yellow Fever - Geraldo Magalhães - 1904-1907

Ash Wednesday of 1849. On that day, an unexpected event broke a two-century-old tradition. In the procession that marked the beginning of Lent – since 1647 one of the most lavish and best-attended in Rio de Janeiro –, the image of São Benedito remained in the sacristy of the Igreja da Ordem Terceira da Penitência. The reason: some Third Order members took issue with carrying the Black saint, arguing that “a white man doesn't carry a Black man on his back, even if he's a Saint.” To the shock of the legion of devotees present there, the procession followed its usual course without the traditional presence of São Benedito's litter. Despite the sultry day, what ended up causing discomfort was the eccentric act. “That was bound to end badly,” the most superstitious among them must have thought.

Right the following summer, the first great yellow fever epidemic struck Rio. Sure enough, for the devout, the plague could only be the work of Saint Benedict's revenge against the Third Order's lack of discipline. And the version of the offended saint gained an even greater air of reality when it was observed that, despite the number of cases, the Black population had greater resistance to the disease's fatality. In other words, it was white people who suffered most from the tragedy.

Doeu-me um pouco a cegueira da epidemia que, matando à direita e à esquerda, levou também uma jovem dama, que tinha de ser minha mulher; não cheguei a entender a necessidade da epidemia, menos ainda daquela morte.

Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Machado de Assis)

Estimates indicate that more than a third of Rio de Janeiro's 266,000 inhabitants contracted yellow fever that summer of 1849-1850. Official figures reported 90,658 cases and 4,160 deaths – among them that of Pedro Andrade, the little-over-one-year-old son of Emperor D. Pedro II and Empress Teresa Cristina. However, the official records did not reflect the real situation, and media estimates at the time put the number of deaths between 10,000 and 15,000.

O calor está forte; e a senhora baronesa sabe que não é conveniente expor-se aos ardores do sol, sobretudo neste tempo de epidemias.

(A mão e a luva, Machado de Assis)

The ghost of yellow fever haunts carnival revelers in 1876. Revista Illustrada, 03/04/1876. Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional

Image description: This is a black-and-white engraving depicting a carnival in 1876. The image shows a large procession with people dressed in colorful costumes, many of them holding flags and musical instruments. At the center, there is a platform with a statue covered by a white cloak. On the left, two men on horseback, one of them holding a staff, look upward. At the top of the image, a large yellow fever ghost, with a banner reading "A Morte" ("Death"), floats over the crowd. In the background, old buildings with balconies crowded with people watching the celebration.

Sunk in calamity, Rio's residents began imagining possible causes for the emergence of the "plague". While some swore that the "black vomit" — combined with high fever, chills, fatigue, and headache — could only be the "angel of death that God sent to this city", within medical circles, debates about the causes of the epidemic followed a path known at the time as more "materialistic". The community of doctors was split into two rival sects: the contagionists and the infectionists. The former believed that the "yellow fever poison" was transmitted from person to person, through physical contact or the use of contaminated objects. The infectionists, on the other hand, emphasized the influence that the decomposition of substances had on air quality.

Amid the profusion of interpretations about the “prevailing epidemic,” the Central Board of Hygiene was created in 1850, whose main function was to formulate policies for the imperial government's action in the field of public health. To that end, it focused on improving the city's sanitary conditions. While many people were busy organizing penitential processions to São Benedito – who, by that point, had already been given the title of “advocate against the plague” – within the Board, everything seemed to converge toward the infectionist theory of disease spread. Above all, it was necessary to clean up Rio de Janeiro, with its swamps and foul-smelling beaches and streets infested with rotting carcasses.

On the other hand, there were those who resorted to less orthodox methods of containing the so-called "morbid miasmas." For some, wood and tar bonfires purified the air. For others, cannon shots would already be enough. And, of course, there were those who took advantage of the situation to profit from it. Advertisements for "miraculous" cures kept popping up in the newspapers. The so-called "preservatives" ranged from sulfur cigars to vegetable-fiber mattresses. The advertisement for "the Queen's water and oil," for instance, did not even bother to explain the miracle: after all, a composition so effective for growing hair and mustaches was bound to be "an infallible preservative against yellow fever."

In that year of 1850, the epidemic lasted until September. But the disease would not leave the city so soon. From summer to summer, the “saint's fury” spread once again through the capital of the Empire. Until it took a break between 1865 and 1867 and came back with a vengeance in 1868.

Correio da Manhã, 04/28/1903 - Issue 684, p. 2. Fundação Biblioteca Nacional - Digital Newspaper Library

Image description: The image is an old black-and-white newspaper. It is dated April 28, 1903, issue number 684. The main headline reads "Ways to avoid yellow fever." Below it, there is a subheading mentioning that the advice comes from a director of Public Health. The text is organized into three numbered paragraphs, providing information about the transmission of yellow fever by mosquitoes.

Yellow fever would only be brought under control in Rio de Janeiro in 1904, with the successful campaign led by sanitary physician Oswaldo Cruz. The measure was unerringly effective and consisted of eliminating the main vector for transmitting the Flavivirus febricis virus: the Stegomyia fasciata mosquito – discovered by Cuban physician Carlos Finlay and later known as Aedes aegypti. The impact was so great that it even earned a "Register" entry by Olavo Bilac in the February 4, 1904 edition of the newspaper A Notícia: "It seems unbelievable, but it isn't: it's February, the cicadas are bursting, the sun is scorching the city – and there's no yellow fever!"

Yellow Fever Prophylaxis Service and Its Action to Combat the Disease, 1905 (Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Fiocruz)

Image description: Historical black-and-white photograph. On the left, a young tree planted in a pot. In the center, a steam-powered machine on wheels, bearing the inscription "CLAYTON," pulled by two horses. Around it, uniformed men pose standing, holding hoses that snake across the ground. In the background, a building with windows and the sign "JOALHERIA A. MOURA." At the bottom of the image, the watermark "Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Fiocruz."

The poet was right, the disease did stop haunting Rio de Janeiro as an epidemic. It so happens that, as the years went by, a new variant ended up developing. This is sylvatic yellow fever, transmitted by mosquitoes of the genera Haemagogus and Sabethes. More difficult to prevent than the urban type, every now and then an outbreak or another of the disease scares Rio's residents. It's true that times are different now: there is no longer an epidemic and preventive measures have changed. However, even today, Rio remains on guard against yellow fever with the #temquevacinar campaign.

Minha Viola - Noel Rosa - 1930